for CAConrad
Caterpillars dig up
a parking garage today
I dig up words—
they need, they tell me
S P A C E
any poem worth its
P L A C E
As an indolent child
must drape quilt over
cushion to enter the cave
through the other side of
which he or she will emerge,
a glittering beak’s rise
from a fresh puddle, a thirst
whose sating is time
coupled with a warm,
womb solitude.
As the tractors go
deeper, sofa-sized
concrete boulders run
through with metal rods
that twist and point
to every place
where a child has suspected
that “God” might
Live.