Now I let it fall back
in the grasses.
I hear you. I know
this life is hard now.
I know your days are precious
on this earth.
But what are you trying
to be free of?
The living? The miraculous
task of it?
Love is for the ones who love the work.

The day the deer died,
I was alive in my house. 
I was alive in a watery field
of glaciers. In the realm 
of birchwood in my throat.
The day the robins wept, the day
foxes ran from the woods on fire. 
I was alive in a decade. Sometimes
dreaming of another region 
was my religion. It was 
a place before trees, prior 
to the flame. When the deer died,
I was in my house dreaming. Then 
the drought came. Cessation 
of sound. Flames as red as apples 
lodged inside my throat hissing.