sponge

a sponge becomes a sponge
when the feeding stops. may we
make useful the dead. let them
soak in gray dishwater and scrub
our pans. let a femur become a flute,
the music of our legs lengthy
and not to be construed.

if I could make a tool or a song
of all that is dead in me, i’d make
a bellows of my lungs, not for an organ,
but for a fire that needs some tending,
the recalcitrant log still wet
from a cutting, green and uncured,
banked beneath a flue and hissing,

always hissing.

Image: NOAA on Unsplash