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 shapes
with his fingers on the nostrils of a pipe
the sounds air makes

shapes the sounds a mallet thumps
from a tabor   the constable
comes to send him home   him

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

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