Housebreaking

LOL because they would kill us all, that's why.
But lengthen out your arm and hold the sun
between your thumb and forefinger, so.
There's still a space of time.

The mortar spits and spurts between the clenching bricks
as the walls come down, as the walls have always come:
ruins are arresting because so seldom
dies a house a natural death. Young men love

to wrench things apart and watch them fall;
Including things like you. Me.
Still I have held a nail like the sun
and driven it with a hammer, in my time,

And I was a young man myself, eager for wreck and ruin.
So things get built, even so, in the lulls
and arrhythmias of history.

The dust of wallboard,
the hanker of mold: we master nothing,
and the winter comes behind.