About

The Box, a poem from Landing Light by Don Paterson

Details: Parent Category: ROOT

The box

If it can stay
at its post,
cross-braced
between
the world
and the
weather
this one
will see
me out:
behold
its dark
scoured
innards,
fragrant
with tea
and rust,
it's drum-tight
blown-egg feel, the cone
of air before it, wired and tense
as a lover by a telephone. Bert
Kwakkel, my Dutch
luthier, emptied
so much wood out of the wood
it takes no more than a dropped shoe
or a cleared throat on the hall landing
to set its little blue moan off again.
I port it to its stand. I let it
still. I contemplate it
like a skull.

Don Paterson, Landing Light