Smokestack

poetry 0
Linda Bamber

 

Sometimes I think the gods want something else.
Enough with the libations, they might cry
(if it weren’t for the prohibition
on two-way speech). Don’t gore that ox on my account!

 

Out my office window is
a red brick smokestack
tapered, silent, tall
against the blue.

 

It may want my attention, not trinkets
or something to eat.

 

Sometimes I think of it all day.

Linda Bamber is a Professor of English at Tufts University. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Agni, The Kenyon Review, Raritan, The Nation, The New York Times, and elsewhere; her poetry collection, Metropolitan Tang,  was published by David R. Godine.