of something trapped,
or of the very old—anyone consigned to waiting
and who has chosen to obey. Meanwhile, between them
a hole had been dug, immense,
all their words thrown in there,
irretrievable. Or mangled,
torn from their real meanings or intent, just given over
to why should it matter now? And for her, now,
replaced by the plain language of the dogs,
who in a few syllables have everything to say.
The one that came to me out of the sea, perfect
serrated edges of its six wings,
each seamless with tiny yellow feathers,
the two bright center ones with fake black eyes
pretending sight. Even drowned,
the wings held tight, a simple knot at the top
attaching them to the black worm of the body.
What fragile stitchery the tide held up,
carrying it in on a wave. I took it to my desk,
arranged it so as to see the colors as they dried,
the veins rising, shuddering with my breath.
But now, this ant has found its way
under my immaculate shack and climbed the pilings,
through gaps in the floorboards to one leg
of my writing table, and up that to the surface
plane of three cracked boards, where it scurries
to the moth: my creature.
Pulled from the sea with my own hands—mine, I think,
because I believe my very will can save it.
If only the bird had been alive, not something dead
delivered onto sand; and not this packed cold sand,
where nothing moves even slightly, no blow-holes,
no scurrying things, and if only the shore birds’
seaweed nests, that little piping, hadn’t been smothered
by a freak spring tide. Now the plovers must begin again:
eggs and hatching, the mothers’ fake writhing
when they see me, squawking and dragging their wings
to save their chicks. Oh save me
from the whole painstaking work of early June—
this blowing fifty degrees, no sand bed of heat
in some dune bowl’s hollow, no love,
and on this outer beach Euphoria
just the name of the shack I want in this driving rain.
And if only it would stop, shut itself up for good—
this off-key if only that goes on singing,
like some deranged child, repeating.
We pretended to know nothing about it.
I withdrew to childhood training: stay out
of swampy undergrowth, choked edges.
This was around the time
we were too cruel to kill the mice we caught,
leaving them in the Have-a-Heart trap
under the sun-burning bramble of rugosa.
But moving up the trail, we caught a glimpse
right at the start: the fox just over the hillock
on the dune-side slope, spoiling
the grass-inscribed sand. Neither of us looked—
it seemed best to back away.
On the dune’s steep side
we surveyed what we’d come for: ocean’s
snaking blues beyond the meadow, the silvered
blade-like wands lying down. Lovely enough
to hold ourselves to that view.
But the currents of an odor wafted in and out,
until the sweep of smell grew wider, wilder.
The heat compounded, and ugliness
settled its cloud over us, profound as human speech,
although by then we were not speaking.
Chippy fallen in, little head bobbing,
and from the second floor, dark in their conversation,
she runs to rescue. No handy net to lift it out, no
chipmunk-sized anything, so she throws
her shirt, a raft of sorts to scamper on,
too heavy, too close—how could she not know this,
her usual way of jumping in before thinking—
and it flips, goes under.
The broom, she’s calling now to the silent house,
bring me the broom.
The creature fights itself up, and she leans
to grab the baby belly and soaked heft,
pluck it
