The Call

by Michelle Lewis

A crumpled city
called, it wants its funneled
wind back.

Wants its throat of dust to unfurl,
fall like powder on its playing children.

A river beneath the Veteran’s Bridge
called, it wants its distance back.

Its troubled depth was not
for us to know.

Then the earth’s heart
dropped a dime, proposed to turn
its devastation in, sate
itself with new, wild soil.

It was some message.
We agreed to all the terms.

Wolves ate our various cancers.
You came to take your body back —
the barn coat you left on shore,

your cell, your weed,
the voice that said I’ve been poisoned
before you disappeared.

By a drink, an aching?  We wouldn’t
know.  Goats were sent to
clean the ground of thorns.