Penelope Schott

Wisdom Spell

The whole family bathed in the iron tub on the porch.

You, the youngest, got the water last. 

Today you are back in that washtub, so old, so clean,

so raw, wisdom comes soaking in

through your crepe paper skin.

Wrap yourself in a white towel dried stiff on the line.

Put whatever you think you know and want to share

into this dented tin bucket:                                                                        

            how to cook okra

            so it doesn’t slime

           

            how to approximate

            how to forgive

Hold the bucket out to the young. Jiggle it, like this.

Notice how not even one plump, unwrinkled hand

will come reaching for that bucket.  No matter.

Recite after me:

      Bucket, spill.              

      Tub, rust.                  

             Bucket, spill.

              Tub, rust.

      Porch boards, rot.     

      Rust, flake into soil.    

            Porch boards, rot.                                    

            Flake into soil.

Now you are wise.

*

Abandonment

On a dry ridge above the Columbia River,

a yellow lab – the kind of gentle old dog

where when you look at his folded ears

you want to say aw – sprawls in the shade

of a cottonwood.  The firewood is chopped

unevenly and the house needs paint.  Far, far

below, on the distant bridge, if there are cars,

they’re invisible, and the round eastern hills

are brown.  Meanwhile, here up on the ridge,

someone came and arranged flower baskets,

tables, benches, and two scrap-iron globes,

and then that person seems to have vanished,

leaving these humped rocks to sleep in rows

like obedient children at nap time.  Nobody

is coming, and nobody is going.  What if this

were the first moment after the Apocalypse,

and nothing remained but the dog and me

and that double barge just now passing under

the bridge, and the long white wake foaming

behind it?

© Penelope Schott

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