What We’re Doing These Days To Keep Afloat

We’ve hired a plumber to saw the top shelves from the library.

We’ve changed our motto:

A good foundation is all anyone needs or

The rest will grow back.

Meanwhile, in the elevator shaft,

one who was supposed to fix the roof knits in the dark.

He calls it a sweater, but it has neither armholes nor space for the head.

As for the body that will wear it:

“A garment is to live in,” he says.

Some insist he’s composing our shroud,

but others call it a bridal veil or

a roadmap,  or even

an elevator.

We knock on the walls,

drop letters and petitions into the hole,

send a cat through a gap in the brick to unravel the garment by night.

No one will say it,

but she seems to be neglecting her duties.

I too have been wakened by mice burrowing in my navel.

A secret, more radical sect among us believe the garment will catch the wind.

Someday soon.

Our knitter will drift up from the shaft and rise into ether.

Who will need fifteen staircases then?

They call the garment a flight plan,

which in our language means

manifest or sometimes chequebook

or the dog must have his supper

or I’m sorry there is no more soup.

It’s no wonder we’re confused.

What to do?

The carpenter drills pin holes in all of the pipes:

messages in Braille for our blind knitter.

Little Fountains, he calls them.

It’s a critical success:

“If you can’t fly, try swimming.”

We like his work so much we’ve ordered up

another building.

With any luck, we’ll soon be underwater.

Singing.

Oh that will be the day;

all our worries will be over then.

Notes
Photos taken in 2010 in and around NSCAD U.