Fall 2024

In   the   milliseconds   &      minutes     &  
millennia  when   I    no   longer   am   the  
bundle of meat & need  unpoeming  itself  
in   the still   hours   of  a   full   or   empty  
house,  I  dream  my  eye socket   encased  
underground   with    root    &   worm    &  
watershed threading  through it.  |  |  The  
summers   become  hotter  &   hotter.  |  |  
Unbearable  &  luminous,  the  refrain  of  
the  song  of  extinction— 

My  children  &  my   children’s   children  
will  inherit   the  edges of cumulonimbus  
clouds,     the       unexpected      sunflower  
blooming   from   a     second-story     rain 
gutter,   the  gentleness   of   the  marbling 
sunlight  on  the  fur  of a  rabbit  stilled in  
a  suburban  backyard.  |  |  I  am  in   love 
 with    the   Earth.   |  |   There    are    still  
blackberries  enough   to  light the    brain  
with the star charts of a sweetness— 

&  yet  &  yet  &  yet, the  undertow  of  the  
expanding    universe     repeats    to      the  
mitochondria    in   my    cells.   The     tiny  
bluebird  in my throat continues   to   build  
her  nest   with  twigs   & mud  &  scraps of  
Amazon packing tape.  |  |   I feel  the  now 
of   now  fluttering   diastole  &  systole   in  
my  biceps  & lungs  &  toe  bones   |  |  The  
oranges  &  reds  &   yellows  of   my   many  
Octobers   leaf  to   life   &   spill   from   my  
mouth:  unaccountable  acorns,   midnight 
loam, overgrown meadows,  

a wee spore adrift among the fireflies—

No, nothing, no thing, no where— 
the o of no blinks open 

I think that you think that I think 
too much about grief 

It’s not only mine—we’re in the same current 

You won’t hear it blazing always in the unprocessed 
wind under the voice recording 

I wear my nerve halo, a handful of seeds, a breakdown 
in the blood-brain barrier

It’s come to this: the interstate with star-shaped 
plants and mile markers that multiply one’s belonging 

Can you hear the low pulse tree-growth consuming the fence? 

Books are states of consciousness, a record— 
What won’t finally kill you, you eat its tongue 

Holy I’ll make the alphabet for interrupters, malcontents
Holy is the person who digs the person out the rubble into the grave

About you: weather will taste metallic in the overnight 
visuals, something lightdark, slick-liver-wet 

Put a whisper into a jar, a war 
trots out of your chiaroscuro head

Once loyal to a cruel master,
the dog moves like a man who
not so long ago weighed a lot less
and is still figuring the difference,
what if anything to make of it.
It doesn’t matter, whatever
tenderness she’s known since;
the dog, I mean. They’re called
hesitation wounds, the marks
left where the hand, having meant 
to do harm, started to, then 
reconsidered. As if a hand
could reconsider. The dog 
wants to trust, you can see it 
in her eyes, like that part in the music 
where it still sounds like snow 
used to. There were orchards, still;
meadows. She’ll never be free.

to estimate one’s position
without instruments
or celestial observations

calculating direction and distance
traveled from the last known fix
while accounting for tides, currents, grief

drift         numbness
sudden storms of pain
unexpected joy

to reckon is to believe
something true
to reckon with the dead

is to believe I can know them
an airy thinness
gleaming

despite
the distance
traveled

I’d like to know how far
I’ve gone
how much farther there is

to go         how absence
unfathomable
becomes

something I can carry