The armoire tips from out the truckbed with
The same uncertain, blind leap of a fish
Flopping from a boat sole, hoping only to land
Somewhere wet, to break a surface and fill its gills.
The armoire’s disparate woods–a body cobbed
From South Brazilian oak, and shelves still spiced
With the Alaskan soil they munched on once–
The knobs of knotted Chinese rosewood–
All recall a prior fall to to a forest floor:
The same familiar thrill of weightlessness,
Unrootedness, ending, this time, with
A crash on a residential road; no splash,
No cushion of their own decaying leaves.
Lying there, waiting now, another memory
Of being gathered up, of going away, of changing.
Their splintered bodies get piled in a heap
And minivans pass over what gets left behind.
Goddfrey Sue Hammit was born and raised in Utah, and lives in Utah still, in a small town outside of Salt Lake City. Hammit is the author of the novel Nimrod, UT. Website: goddfreyhammit.com
