So the end of a rope frays

                                             Marianne Boruch

                                                     Mudfest

Some kid in the class,

a boy usually. Do we have to, Sister?

And the nun once: no. She turned and slowly no, you don't

have to do anything

but die.

A room's hush

is a kind of levitation. So the end of a rope frays. So mortality

presses its big thumb into clay early, 6^th grade,

St. Eugene's School, mid-century.

It's a mudfest, ever after. Free, yay! Is what some heard

howbeit the gasp

primal, a descending, an unthinkable click.

Forget what she'd no doubt been

programmed to say, as postscript, as speaking of: but we live forever,

don't we, children? In God's sweet light?
She didn't. Too old, too mean, too tired, too smart, maybe shocked

at her own relish, her bite coming hard.

I'm just saying there are

charms on the bracelet from hell.

An ordinary question, the boy's whatever it was, and did we have to?

He was stunned. I could tell.

And he must have walked home in the falling leaves distracted,

disturbed, pushed off for a time

from the anthill.

As for the other ants, we had our work.

It gleamed like truth is said to, in the dark before us –

grains of edible filth or just

sand and splintered glass. To carry.

Carry it down.

From The American Poetry Review, November-December 2014.