Mailbox

Mailbox
A Fable

Brandishing crowbars, a sledgehammer,
two men and a woman surround the mailbox.

It is Sunday night, three in the morning.
Inky-blue sky, houses motionless as broken toasters.

The mallet pounds the blue metal box,
and it leans its trunk towards the dewy grass on the lawn,

as if straining to hear noise just below
the ground. Then, the sound of a dishwasher being pried

from the wall. Now the crowbars,
the woman hisses. The three jerk the box loose,

extract it like a heavy-rooted weed.
One man nudges the mailbox onto a dolly, wheels

it out to a truck. The men and
the woman sit and drive, not saying a word

during the drive to the site, just breathing
hard, gazing out into the headlight-painted road.

The farther they drive, the higher the buildings
grow around them, tall and slender as sheaves of wheat.

Turn here, the woman again, her voice
softer this time. The truck crunches up to the place:

a four-storeys-deep hole in ground,
the space where a foundation will go, the air humming

in anticipation of the concrete that
will replace it. The woman pushes the mailbox from

the bed of the truck, scoots it through
the dirt, sends it sailing into the mammoth depths.

Fall well, she tells the mail trapped inside.
For a building to gather strength enough to rise,

it needs the voices in envelopes, in the mailbox,
sealed always, out of time and in, both fossil and seed.