Paul Hostovsky

was just a tiny thing,

a handful of unrhymed couplets

about the warm tears

of old men,

tears that bless everything,

help nothing, no one–

each line like an empty clothesline

with a few orphan clothespins,

no clothes, no colors flapping

in the breeze. Just the sagging

line with its suggestion of a house

on one side, a tree on the other,

or two trees and no house–

then the clothespins flying away.