Basement Breath

The bulb in the cellar is coated in dust.

The pipes are all sweating with patches of rust.

I pulled out the parka I wore in the fall

and found a dark garden against the back wall.

It’s a velvet of soot, a damp, heavy stain

that smells like the mud and the rot and the rain.

The collar is ruined, the lining is blown,

it’s the scent of a place where the sun never shone.

I tried to scrub it with soap in the sink,

but the spots are a permanent, shadowy ink.

Some things go quiet and black in the dark

and leave behind such a miserable mark.