Contingency #2

So the rules to these short poems is that I can only scribble them at work, they have to be short and they all have to be "What If" poems. This one was a little longer than some others but I'll show you. So it's not really a poem a day because most of the time I wrote seven a day. Not all of them are winners but I'll post them anyway.

Contingency #2: Bogs

If you’re sad for a long while,
a bog will move into your basement.
And sure, you can still live with a bog
because it’s in the basement and we often forget
what’s in our basements.
For a time you can just live around it,
get the wash using a card table raft, a ruler for a paddle.
The dryer will be useless (defunct by name even)
but the washer will still wash and it’ll agitate the cottontails
into a swash of seeds sifting in the dust light.
A downstairs freezer will keep moccasins sleepy
and the water heater will incubate the tadpoles
into a dream time soundtrack piped through the house.
But if you can’t break off this sadness,
the bog will brim the staircase, the lily pads will snake
up through the ducts and choke your house in flowers.
Any visitor will have to wear galoshes,
have to talk over your shrill of mosquitoes.
You have to let go before it tops your bed,
and enters your ears, and soaks your body heavy,
so sopping you never leave, breathing the wetness
listening to life underwater and distant.

So let it dry. A puddle will likely remain.
And somedays you’ll go down to visit,
tarry, and then return upstairs.