travail of the modern prophet

                                               Echoes of Heraclitus





Four days I sat in the attic
with 27 cans of beans
we were going to use on Labor Day
and some coca cola I drank very slowly
                                                       to make it last

Finally I bashed and bashed
with a can
till I created enough of a breach
to pry open the smallest slit in the roof

O my God!
one of my neighbors was floating with
her hair entangled in a tree limb

A helicopter flew me away
I wound up in Utah
where I'm waiting for Jesus
or anybody

to help me home.

That's what my mother always said:
The rivers always pours toward poverty
You can't lose the same house twice

but once you get to heaven
the water makes God's bread to leaven



                  Ed Sanders







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