Forgotten Ground Regained

The Odds and Ends

This poem was originally published in The Hudson Review, Spring, 2025.
For weeks the big tall · building had worn blue boards that blanked out · its bottom floors.The dated, divvied-up · depths of it had slowlythinned to façade—a theater maskwhose witless windows · wouldn’t stop staring.
A crane came for it. The closer insidestoically lowered · stainless-steel-strandedrope and raised · a wrecking ball.The arm pivoted, and pendulous poundagefollowed it, walloped · the wall and wow:instant inwardly · disintegrating Gothic.The next day brutal · backhoe hullabaloogave way to the scrounging · scrape and scuttleof final shovels. When the shroud came down,our strolls had to face · the refused spoliadeemed unworthy · of work in the waste stream;the bits no carrion · bird would bite.Providence had planned · no place for them.
About two weeks later · I took a taxiway out to remote · Maimonides Midwood.My heart had started · startling mewith throbs like threats, thudding heads-up. A batlike, squeak-sight · scanner was scheduled to chat awhile · with the chambers of me.Well, on the way there, this wild Hindugod was doing · a dance on the dash.Six swarming limbs · were aswim in the swervingflume of the highway. Once I informedthe cabbie’s back · it was beautiful, moving, he told me my heart, the hub of the whole world,is bare feet beating · on a ballroom floor.All things that thrum · thanks to a pumpcan feel the Raja · romping in there,turning out time · by taking the stepsthat unweave His has-been · warps and wefts and stitch from the pickings · new stock whose stuffwill be salvage in turn. That sounded sort ofwarm in a way: a whirl ensuringplacement of parts · and perpetual purpose.
But I can’t shake it—the shadow surenessthere remains at large · the matter of misfits.You know, like that scree · discrepantly furtheringno plan back there · where the building had been:the blips; the blank-fates; the blueprints’ blind spots; the loose ones wondering · Where to? and Why?
Copyright © Aaron Poochigian, 2025
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