Grain pattern on drying concrete

                         by Peter Waldor

New Parents, Bluegrass Festival

The number of powered

sugar granules spilling

off a funnel cake exceeds

the three hundred sextillion

stars of the universe

Some powder sticks to the dough

and some powder falls,

as one bleary-eyed parent

passes the cake over

their newborn baby,

to the other bleary-eyed parent.

A streak of powder lands

on the infant's head.

Both parents are large

How perfect that they both are

the way they are . . .

One shades the child

as they, beginners,

concentrate on a diaper change.

The Last of the Original Forms

After disaster,

when the demolition crew

took down the old

concrete column, they found

on its inside,

a wood form the builder

forgot to remove.

A man with a chisel and small sledge

freed the plank before

they turned the column

into rubble and wire.

He took it home,

washed, sanded, and placed it

in a child's room as a shelf.

Five pings of the small sledge

to free the form, the last

of the original forms.

Who knows where

the others ended up,

each plank leaving its own

grain pattern, where it braced
the drying concrete.

From The American Poetry Review, September/October 2014.