is the season of dead things.
Bat curled up on its back, frog broken open
to the meat, a turtle’s pixelated shell.
And all the frantic honeybees.
As a child I daily encountered such death
when the air was close or thundery.
There was the flipping over,
the poking things with sticks.
Look what I found, smeared and bloated.
Look what’s living in it.
ii.
Hawk stood along the path
as I jogged past. He eyed me sharply
but didn’t stir. His ankles had these surprising
little cuffs. When I looked back
he took off into a blur of coral tail, gray wing.
He shrieks around the property
to frighten small creatures into hiding
and picks them off while they scurry.
In this way his cry pierces doubly.
iii.
She was nearly gone
by the time I went to see her.
A nurse was dampening her lips
with a coral triangle of sponge
and she was rasping, a little louder
when I sat next to her and told her I was there
and loved her though who knows if she knew
though they say they do. Her skin
had grown a size too small. Her eyes
that were ice blue were closed that day;
because I’d missed my plane
I missed their final opening.
She died early the next morning.
I held my mother’s hand through this
though we hadn’t spoken in a year.
I’m next, she said. I will be, too.
Quarry
As you slept
I was thinking about the quarry,
about light going deeper
into earth, into rock, the hurt
of light hitting layers
that should be hidden,
that should be buried,
and how when it rained
for a long time that absence filled
with suffering, and we swam.
London, Dresden
In the classically laid out fountain koi
slapped and gaped at the surface
like misguided bathtub toys. Like mute
prisoners. Like the abandoned overgrown
goldfish they were. And even more so
when the sky broke upon them,
unleashing flowers of ice. The bodies
took cover as best they could, as bodies do,
within their medium. And the ice kept on falling,
as long as there was ice to fall.
Flower
The ruler left a welted stripe;
the hand and belt, raised letters
I could read. My desk held
parchment, paint, and mucilage,
its lid a face for stenciling—
how ink would fill the ridge compressed
in wood—those cells—compressed
for good—my own, what I was beaten for.
I never learned to play the violin.
I never learned what I was beaten for.
At Easter brushing watercolor on crayon—
what soaked into the egg’s white skin
and what resisted—beading there—
It’s possible to envy wax.
Sometimes I drew around the mark.
The red would fade, the blue would stay.
Blue shape, blue flower
yellow took. Then everything went in.
Thanksgiving
Swan folding its head
into its wing. That snow—
falling into the water. My friend’s
daughter in the car seat,
sleeping. The water is ice.
The plow doing its job
along the night roads.
Night roads doing their job
of being dark, and slippery.
The crisp perfection of an envelope.
The blank perfection of a sheet.
The snow on the windshield
a tunnel of wings
my friend is driving through.
