Echoes of Heraclitus

by Ed Sanders

Four days I sat in the attic
with 27 cans of beans
we were going to use on Labor Day
and some coca cola I drank very slowly
to make it last

Finally I bashed and bashed
with a can
till I created enough of a breach
to pry open the smallest slit in the roof

0 my God!
one of my neighbors was floating with
her hair entangled in a tree limb

A helicopter flew me away
I wound up in Utah
where I’m waiting for Jesus
or anybody

to help me home.

That’s what my mother always said:
The river always pours toward poverty
You can’t lose the same house twice

but once you get to heaven
the water makes God’s bread to leaven.