plugging

every so often
he would have to stir himself
because the floors
would begin to thin

the ceiling would creep
a little lower

or the sound of rain
falling down
away
would become
too much like
a waterfall

then
he would take his cloud-grey plugs
and load them into
the cloud-plugger

he would swim
around the bottom
of the world
looking for the holes
that must be infused

one by one
hour by hour
hole
after drizzling hole
he filled them

sometimes
there would be a new downpour
and he’d have to
start again

but he swam
and plugged
until the levels
stabilized

then he would
glide through the water
back
to his home
again

happy
just to be
until the next
cloudburst
when he would have to start
plugging

before the world
rained itself completely
away

~

Poem #498 from a series of poems drawn from the imagination and collected as: a Bachelard reverie.