Broken Things

No hot water and no heat again.
The radiators are solidly useless, dead.
No water to bath the children
Or shower off the mud and stress.
Mold threatens the basement walls
As the flood recedes
Leaving broken things in its wake.
Cold, rain, chaos.

But the mice come back in their kayaks,
Or however they survive,
Better than we.

I take a loaf out of the freezer to thaw
(And go to sleep under blankets, four to a bed.)

In the night, mice savage the loaf,
Gnaw right through the bag.
No bread for the children’s lunches.
No heat and hot water again.

The sky is slate, rain-chalked, wet,
Cold, gauzed in gray.

I lay things out
On the sodden earth and hope they dry
But they do not,
And I pitch them.
One day, is all it takes
to fill a dumpster big as a whale.
No heat and hot water again.
Cold, rain, chaos.

Then the sun comes out
And dries us out.
It warms us up
And the heat comes back.
Not as needed on a warm spring day,
But isn’t that always how things come?