The Color of Blood
The color of blood;
That’s just what it was—
Defied description, at least, for us.
But we had to clean it up,
As if nothing happened,
Yet that was of little consequence.
The job needed to be done.
We worked silently together,
Employing mop, bleach, towels.
Although if you watched carefully,
You could see we hesitated,
Every now and then,
When something odd struck us:
A hairpin, two cracked toenails,
Any remnant of idle chance,
Finding its way to our fingers.
Yes, we were hired hands,
Questioning God’s plan—
And a stranger’s last moments.
Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack, Under Damaris’ Dress, The Alphabet of Love, The Gentle Man, The Last Mojito, The Geographer’s Wife, Whistling to Trick the Wind, and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993–2023 (Meadowlark Press, 2024). He has taught at Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal, and, most recently, in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. His work has been widely anthologized in textbooks published by City Lights Books, Etruscan Press, Fountainhead Press, Harcourt Brace, Longman, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, Simon & Schuster, Thomson/Heinle, the University of Iowa Press, Wadsworth, and others. He lives in Pasadena, California.