My Freedom Lawn

 Scraps of Gold

They look neither greedy nor held in thrall

by the ten thousand things of life,

though their postures make them seem

sold out.

Tonight the two sit at their kitchen table,

stuff pieces of broken gold

in a padded envelope, and do not try to make

the past better than it actually was,

for the hour is late.

     If they believe themselves to be figures

in a medieval woodcut, hermetic

or commonplace, they aren’t saying.

If one has weighed a piece

in a graduated cylinder while the other

marked its density, mass over volume,

or streaked a porcelain cup for proof,

it isn’t obvious.

They might be here together reading

the catechism of Paracelsus,

or at the beginning of their financial

meltdown.

I don’t know if the man really expects
fair value for the Neil Young broken heart
of gold locket, the three-legged golden
calf charm, the battered golden sombrero
ashtray, or is sad because the G-Pak
he received from Faust & Co.

—Gold Broker to the Stars—

won’t hold his magnum opus,

his mutus liber, illustrating
the dialectics of the Unconscious.

I’ve heard there is dross of all kinds

that can be turned into cash,

but don’t ask me to know if

the fires burning in Gehenna,

stretching from the foot of Mount Zion

eastward to Kidron Valley, burn away

what the trailer trash left behind.

Of this man, who might have committed heresy

during the Inquisition and qualified

for the rack or stack, and this woman,

who probably saved her first grader’s

dried-up stars and fed the table scraps—

like gold they were—to her little dog,

what have you heard?

They will pay lip service to wisdom,

and speak of gold metaphorically

to accept their failure.

But I wonder: is it allegorical

or obvious, perhaps just tv ad nonsense,

when the woman lays a golden

egg for the man to swallow whole?

Do they glow from the alchemy of love,

or moan au au auauau over

the element of their desire?

How often have I been conjured by them?

Am I hammered until I bend,

or until I bite my very own tail?

Is this the Faust & Co. Scrap Gold Refinery,

or the fiery furnace of a medieval woodcut?

Is this their scrap gold or mine?

John Blackard

John Blackard is a graduate of the University of North Carolina with advanced degrees in English Studies and Library Information Studies. He has three books of poems in print and a book about the golden age of paperback publishing. He has received Fulbright and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships. He lives in Portland with his wife, the poet Valentina Gnup, and recently served as associate editor of Poetry Northwest.