Two Poems – Cooper Wilhelm

 
Squeeze tight.

If anything is worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.
Where was I?
Your mother loved you enough for you to make this cake,
to sell enough catheters to make the house payment, to finish the job
when your 16-year-old hits the cat
with the jetta your mother helped you buy when you left college
for nothing really, nothing, still nothing,
and now this.

 
 

Probabilities will collapse.

I.
My grandfather loaded
his cupboards with mostly sage and buckshot,
murder and repair, a couple coupons.
The breath that lifted out of him was like incense,
holy with blood,
savory and cedar and rose.
You watch him huff in a morning cold,
frost everywhere but the leaves still somehow wet,
and see to sweat is to betray
some humility in the uncouth effort presumably
city folk don’t know. Get home.
Bake. Wring your hands around each other
to free them of their dirt. I love you
means so little from a saint
you can let go of not hearing it said that much at home.