The air tonight is a nesting 
doll. The call of cicadas 
around the sound of bird 
settling into nest around 
the rustling of something 
beyond the yard in the 
leaves around the smell 
of jasmine around the 
giving away of consciousness 
that surrounds 
what might be the last 
of the day’s worries or 
the start of the night’s 
fears. How often is it, 
after a pandemic and 
during climate rages, 
to have a seed of fear 
stuck into our teeth, a pea 
beneath our mattress. 
So perhaps the jasmine 
masks decomposition 
that will bloom in tomorrow’s 
sun. Perhaps the distant stirring 
is a coyote that will take 
the neighbor’s cat in its jaw 
and shake. Perhaps even 
the night air carries virus. 
What’s calming in the world 
has always been a mask. Ask 
the remains of a small child 
found in a cave in Siberia with 
tooth marks in bone. Ask 
the child’s mother, long dissolved 
into breath distributed across 
the globe and water long traveled 
to the ocean. Ask that nesting bird 
so weary it doesn’t hear 
the neighbor’s cat. Who 
are we rooting for on this earth?