work song

daily bread

you are a luminous little kid, doing the math:
working long hours for two minutes
of dawn. yet the sun is wet down the bib
of the world, or whatever purity that stands
beneath my heart and the kitchen hose.
every moment swells—
you'd think it was hurricane season,
that shady figure, lugging around the itch
of petrichor. it's green, what simmers,
what leaks, and odors.
I stare down the kettle, consider the grave:
remember your nosebleed, the seizure,
my hands aging   faster
than the rest of me.
today I learned every person is their own cistern,
a more innocent excavation than I feared:
like with time we might still all be replenished.
dream waters, then, or diluted dish soap, at least
three sets of scales, for good measure,