Wyatt Underwood

golden shovel sonnet from a line by Terrance Hayes

     in "Cocktails with Orpheus"

 

a blaze wanes in a fireplace, and I

shiver before I need to, imagining the want

of heat about to come, the darkness turning to

cold, wrapping me like a sweater.  Oh to be

my own candle, my own source of light and heat, a

representation of a human

conversation with angels, or even with God Himself, above

the petty concerns we normally have, shelter, clothing food, sex, the

safety of ourselves, our family, our descendants, our body

recreating itself into the future, our uprooted

and desperate bid for some kind of immortality, and

our willingness to fool ourselves.  It's all right,

it may be pathetic but it's also heroic, a

man trying to woo himself into a goddess' fold