Denver Butson
Weariness
even the peonies are weary
they drop their heads
on fence railings
they hang their heads
down along their stems
the air is so heavy
with what we have
asked it to carry
with the burdens
of ourselves
we have given it
to hold
yesterday I saw a man
who looked like
he could belong
to a distant century
except for his face mask
and plastic bag
stop and pull peonies
out of that bag
and lay them on the bumper
of a refrigerated corpse truck
humming behind a funeral home
and look up at the sky
above the corpse truck
with dignity and ceremony
he turned
looked right at me
and then seemed
to go back to
disintegrating
into weary dust
before my eyes
every evening
at approximately 7:02
when the applause
on our street
and apparently every other street
in the city ends
a little boy
a few doors up
whose name is Samson
tries to have the last word
with me
after all the cheering
and clapping
and pot banging stops
he looks at me
across the stoops
between us
and bangs his pot
decisively
and I look right at him
and bang my popcorn can lid
with just as much meaning
and then he bangs twice
and I bang twice
and then three and three
and then with great fanfare
he lifts his spoon
one last time
and I try to match
his strike
so that together
we make one last
mighty sound
it’s as if we are
two dueling drummers
who have decided
to work together
and not against
one another
or just two people
who won’t drop our heads
who refuse to simply go back
into the silence
without doing all we can
not to be weary
—Submitted on 06/11/2020
Denver Butson is the author of five books of poetry, including most recently In Which We All Kiss Something Secretly (Court Tree Collective, 2019), a collaboration with visual artist Maria Mercedes Martinez. His poems have appeared in The Yale Review, Ontario Review, Field, Zyzzyva, Tin House, and other journals, as well is in several anthologies. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.
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