Instructions For A Diorama

Imagine a diorama, or build one
if you need to: shotgun style
house in cinderblock gray
cardboard walls set in
marshdamp earth. Look up
 

and notice that it's raining, that it's been raining
since the beginning and no matter how many times
someone stitches up the sky it always starts raining
again. Picture cardboard walls saturated

and slumping inward, little clay figures inside
melting into the ground. Dig out
a needle and thread from wet clay

and try to stitch up the sky. We've all done it,
but it always starts raining again, first a trickle
at the seams and then a downpour

and then the walls are slumping in

and you're melting into the ground

and the needle is slipping from your
clayslick fingers. It always happens
like this. Nothing changes
but the steady accumulation
of alternating layers
 

of cinderblock gray cardboard and redbrown clay
and cinderblock gray cardboard and redbrown clay
and cinderblock gray cardboard and redbrown clay
and muscle and bone and the needles
 

are piling up and sticking up from the ground
like weeds because the rain is made of needles

and how do you stitch up the sky
when the rain can pierce right through
the skin of the world, this little world
you worked so hard
to build, tear a thousand tiny holes
that spread and grow and multiply
until there are more holes than sky,
more needles than ground.