Ed Madden
9th November 2016, The Gates
Bert’s up early, bringing in the boxes
from last night’s auction, detritus of someone’s life.
He shows me a painting, a street scene somewhere
in Philadelphia, warm with autumn light.
The table lot went cheap, all art, framed things.
The yard rustles with leaves, the trees shaking
their lives off in the dark—what they’ve been doing
all week, roots sunk deep for what’s to come.
The woman who bid against him told him she just
wanted the frames. That some of them were filled
with sketches, photos of Christo’s ephemeral work
only made his story more beautiful this morning
as he told it, as he unloaded the truck, the walk
brittle and ankle-deep in dead leaves.
Ed Madden is a professor of English and director of the Women’s & Gender Studies Program at the University of South Carolina. He is also the poet laureate for the City of Columbia, SC. His most recent book is Ark, a memoir in poems about help with his father’s home hospice care in his last months with cancer.