Steps I have taken for ends I cannot discern

Bob Hicok

The other day I made a cake and walked it
to the top of a mountain. I like to think
fundamental geological processes
saw this as the birthday party
they never had. From there,
I looked out upon the valley’s
ongoing cake deficiency, came down
and bought some chickens
to obtain the eggs for all the cakes
I would need to make things right.
In keeping chickens for eggs,
the most important thing
is not eating the chickens—I have made
two tasty mistakes in that regard.
Then a woman walked by
cradling an afterbirth in her arms
and calling it Susie and I gave her
a chicken. Then a man
nailed his ear to a tree and I gave him
a chicken. Egg production
and therefore cake production
were way down due to my automatic
chicken response to sadness.
Even when I was sad that chickens
have wings but can’t fly, I gave myself
a chicken. This whole time, though, I forgot
I’m a hermit. One day I was handing
a chicken to this man who’d been crying
barbed wire when I said to him, o my God,
I’m a hermit, like you might say,
o my God, I forgot to pick up my son
from the cleaners. Kids come back
so shiny, don’t they, shiny and eager
to clean up their rooms. Through all
of this hullabaloo, I lost sight
of the cake in the oven, the cake
I had meant to give the river, the river
the rain comes to as a sky river
without irony, the river
that arrives in my left eye and leaves
from my right, the river
January freezes for wind
to do toe loops and double axles
across, I took that river
a burnt cake and an apology.
The river accepted the burnt cake
as a down payment on whatever else
will get thrown its way. Chair legs.
Dead deer. Commas. The reason to be God
is to hold up a river and see
what shakes out in the end.
The rest of it—the making
of a world—sounds like work, like hammer
hammer hammer, saw saw saw.
The reason not to be God
is a private matter between God
and whomever God confesses to
when it is late and the sky
turns the color of listening.

Bob Hicok has published seven books of poetry, the latest of which, Elegy Owed, was released by Copper Canyon Press in 2013.

“Steps I have taken for ends I cannot discern” appears in our Autumn 2012 issue.