It swelled in the telling, like the belly
of a cow with calf. It became exact
as a suit tailored to the torso of a judge.
Hewn, supposedly, from gopher wood,
name for who knows what. Actually,
he used what he had. Boards scavenged
from sheep pen or pried from a fence.
Somehow his walls slouched but did
not quite fall down. Meantime no matter
how the story goes, his wife and sons
were not on board with his fixation.
Neighbors spat and jeered. Who wants
to cheer for doom? And so he worked
all by himself against extinction, took
anything with fur and feathers in,
losing a lot of them in working out
who went next to whom, how tight
to cram them in. Also how few
of each he could get away with.
It wasn’t two. There were so many
mysteries he never did get right,
including what ate what ate what,
and how much almost everything
hung on everything else. Etcetera.
He broke every rule except the one.
Which is to care, no matter how far
over your head you are about to be.
Never mind if you can’t even swim.
Click here to read Kristin Camitta Zimet on the origin of the poem.
Image: Neck and Neck by Andrew, licensed under CC 2.0.
