For practice let something stay broken,
the faucet's drip keep you waking.

Keep on paying insurance through the car wonąt go,
don't fix it,
dead on the street, gray and flaking.

Let it keep, unmended, something small ­
the cat's arthritic knee,
she's getting used to it after all.

The bird bath frost cracked left blue shards in the garden ­
Well, they were pretty, weren't they?
Cutting in the summer
fingers at work in the larkspur.

All of it, let it run like water,
dirty car-washing water.
The city says don't.
We do, we do, we do.

All of it, even the path
to Piper's Creek, all fall a shower of gold,
and in the old orchard, the copper-brown, penny-sized pears.

Today, an orange barrier-strip, and the sign says
Path Closed, the storm, a raw sewage flow.

Let them never clear it.
Let last week's have been the last walk there, back on that day

so dizzy it was impossible
to sit down or stop or look up, the leaves
so bright-edged and stormy, the light so struck.