Who will gather leaves for the children’s craft?

Who will sort the harmless reds from the poison?

Who will fold and unfold the octagonal star?

Who will care less for the flower than for its unfolding?

Who will look at a rock and see a king, a loser, a lost you?

Who will take the rock and give it features, some bits of wire, a cedar rose, a rusty screw, twigs, bark, acorns, seaweed, leaves of brass, black rubber caps, red plastic coils, the tips of eaten corn cobs?

Who will see the faces on the ground, the faces washed ashore, the faces from a world blown into the town on a wind?

Who will hold a mirror to each one?

Who will see swan in the beer can smashed by a train?

Who will bend down, who will pick it upsharp-edged, dirty, dripping with beerand display it at the town library, as if to remind us:

This is what we are: forgotten, trampled, broken by travel, broken by time, made different by machines, made pale by the elements, made dark by the earth and the smut of offshore factories. See! We have always been here, lying in the street, vessels of intoxication, beauty disguised as trash!

Who will wait in the dark by the pond to witness phosphorescence?

Who will cheer summer’s end if only for that light?

Who will dig the graves of dogs belonging to elderly women?

Who will be watching?

Who, with a shovel and flowers, will be standing by?

— Jennifer Tseng