Jake's Flea Market

the boy who plays the flute
breathes gentle breath over the lip brim
and across the open mouth of   oh a stick

a dead stick
that lays across his youthful hands

a stick   straight as rigor mortis

his eyes whirl to their corners

across the square comes the constable
comes to send him home   him

and the boy who strums the lute

and the boy who 
with his fingers on the nostrils of his pipe
and with a mallet in his hand that drums a tabor
adds his voice to a volkslied

the constable
comes to send him home   him

and the widow girl who leads a peasant 
boy by the hand into a schuhplattler

the breath sinks
into the disturbance of the still
air in the stick’s airway