For Want of Care
Winter found the road map
crack in the concrete stair
before I did. Rain, too.
Each cycle in the history
of water to frost and back,
widened the gap,
until a wedge, unsteadied
by lessons of wear,
broke away under my foot.
All day indoors, shrinking
from the cold, bare-knuckled
largesse of the repair waiting,
my thoughts of chisels,
and the mix of water, sand,
and concrete, drifted in
and out of the comforting
tea cup steam rising beside
me and the book I was reading;
a history of ordinary lives caught
in civilizations and empires,
crumbling for want of care.
About the Author: Richard Levine, author of Taming the Hours: An Almanac with Marginalia (forthcoming), Now in Contest, Selected Poems, Contiguous States, and five chapbooks, is a BigCityLit Advisory Editor. He received the 2021 Connecticut Poetry Society Award. A Vietnam veteran, he co-edited “Invasion of Ukraine 2022: Poems.” His work is archived in LaSalle University’s Special Collections Library.
Image Credit: Carl Mydans “View showing disintegration of concrete stairs at the Model Housing Corporation, Cincinnati, Ohio” (1935) Public domain image courtesy of the Library of Congress
As It Ought To Be 