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WALKING TO THE MAILBOX
By Quentin Smith
The house porches are glowing in a way that is not normal.
The eerie green sheen of the wounded lawn
Is sogged in its trench by a fresh bleeding of leaves.
It is my destiny to traverse the driveway
Where there is paved nothing at all.
At the driveway’s end there looms
Two shadows of only one mailbox.
My appointed task this morning is to bring
The newspaper out of the black hole
I imagined forming fatally in a silverteen box
When I looked out my window last night.
I arrive trembling inexplicably, with the sky
Bursting apart in meaningful formations.
Yellow and orange explosions bespatter
The back-turned rims of what seem
To be the remains of rioting clouds.
But I am not sure.
Over there a splash of blue now forms
A question mark that points
In some wordless way to the
Pen-inflicted holes,
Arrayed precisely on the gilded pages of gold
Of a book opening to a triumph of truth.
It is opened all the way to the last page
which touches the ground at the end of the street.
I am beckoned to this beautiful, burning answer,
Which would be naturally followed by
my incandescent doom.
Why must only I see this?
With shimmering hands I look down and grab
Pallid letters and newspapers. I quickly plunge
Into the headlines and try to enter
the ordinary world.
But I know I cannot escape my fate.
The unordinary cannot escape the extraordinary.
And now I have to survive the
The glowing, embered coal-like walk
Back to the unwelcoming house.
Written 2002
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