The Broom Poem by Lee Upton

The rocks shone like emery boards,
reflective ruins.
Ceremonial without great effort—
like the swaying of a great rope bridge
over a ravine,
or mushrooms that suddenly
pry upward, the size of cabbages,
footstools,
to reveal the tip
of a lost continent,
the way the broom
in a pantry dumbly speaks.
It is a mule of words—
useful for wresting under edges,
unsupplanted,
as if straw were dried fire and a match
a way of watering it.
Because of dead leaves
I can hear
when people walk on my lawn.