Would You
by Bob Hicok
If you were a pipe in a house burning down, if you were the water in the pipe, if you were the man standing outside in his pajama bottoms, holding your infant daughter in one arm, your mother's urn in the other to keep her from being lost among the ashes of window sills and joists, some of which fall like snow at your feet, if you were the blanket slipped over the man's shoulders, his only home in that moment, if you were the warmth of one hand and then another on his back, leading him away, if you were the moon doing its job above the fire, pulling at oceans and imaginations, if you were the fire fighter who saw a wolf in the flames, saw it turn three times as if beckoning, and followed, and were never heard from again not a word or bone from your body, if the silence of the shadow of a life is all we have, all we leave if being has no skeleton, if autopsies are dissections of zeroes, if your lips were cicadas against my ear, if your teeth found their way to my heart, the red meal of love, if you had wings, if Icarus called from the sun, if Sisyphus said, try again.
first published in ONLY POEMS (2026)
FFS Bob, leave some for the rest of us!
Comment on form: “like snow at your feet” —though this line could have felt like a run-of-the-mill simile, it does two things for me, cool me off and slow me down; but then, I guess, it does a third, because of those two specific functions: it’s as if, and to construct a simile of my own, I’m a boxer unexpectedly thrown into the corner for hydration and rest, then just as unexpectedly, pushed, like from a sling shot (a simile in a simile!) into the ring for round two, or for the last 3/4s of the poem… all the way till Sisyphus suddenly says, Try Again. KO!