what is he rolling up the road? a child asked them.
We snickered and hollered and hooted, said his Uncle Clem
What do you think it is? Aunt Marta threw in with a bit of glee
For of course it was poo, him being a dung-beetle see.
A shattered window
lets the wind stand on edge in its cracks,
yet marriage is not a knot
meant to seize those gaps.
Like a standing trunk, skinned alive by time,
dried to death yet quietly immense,
marriage is not a field of potatoes
but the cultivation of thorns.
Love—
two strands drunk on their own liquor,
sometimes slipping into one,
scanning the other inch by inch,
now and then holding a flesh-heavy smile.
Leechlike disappointments and angers
are cut to measure by endurance,
and like the dung beetle,
unyielding,
we can roll one another on.
The grain of union
is woven not as a lighthouse,
but as a reef.
i’m worthy of nothing, and deserving of all
my couplet cost but a sh*t, yet turned out a ball
By
David Kavanagh
An article about a dung beetle
Says they devour matter that’s faecal
Imagine eating pooh
It’s what dung beetles do
The fetor of their breath must be lethal!
08-19-17
Stinch is my weapon
Rolling my prize possession
In a perfect ball
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.