*

This still warm shopping bag
emptied the way all sculpture
reminds you what it lost

though when you step back
what you see between the jars
is its dried-up riverbed

shaping the Earth, its breeze
just now forming
doesn't yet have the need

for those same airfields
you look for in grocery aisles
take from the shelves

these damp boxes side by side
where you say nothing about rain
till the air you breathe out

has nothing left, by hand
you pull from its place
the sky you saved for last.
                           
SIMON PERCHIK