#205 Kevin Brophy 'Audit'

#205 ‘Audit’

If I haven’t built a table or even a chair

if I haven’t mended a car or a broken arm

if I haven’t farmed a farm or built a factory

if I’ve suffered whatever mattress I find under me

if children do as they please when I call out stop

if every time I sing happy birthday I’m off key

if my heart has been a silent onlooker

if these black birds around town are my many souls

if I have unrolled sheets of tiny words and scenes

along a fading pathway out of here

if the words blew away in the August breeze

if the wattle and the herbs are made by dew

and the rocks really do stiffen with age out there

then this is all that’s not been done

and doesn’t need remembering when someone

places a single wooden cross painted white

and tilting westward in its sandy place

over an abundance of plastic flowers

got from a novelty shop.