As If Hearing Heavy Furniture Moved on the Floor Above Us
As things grow rarer, they enter the ranges of counting.
Remain this many Siberian tigers,
that many African elephants. Three hundred red-legged egrets.
We scrape from the world its tilt and meander of wonder
as if eating the last burned onions and carrots from a cast iron pan.
Closing eyes to taste better the char of ordinary sweetness.
—2016
from Ledger (Knopf, 2020); first appeared in Washington Square. Used by permission of the author, all rights reserved.