As from dark orchard leaves, from quiet scripts
where each shape sends its tendril reaching—
circle and line, the swaddled bud, the petiole 
sprung, an envelope tendered.
					
By a window, the infant 
turns, rooting
toward the breast,
                     sun-lit, 
the mother humming.
(Those far things, sources 
of power and
regret,
cliffs and waves, 
continue
at a distance.)
					
           Here you’ll find
a name scrawled in the bark—
last words, left to chance
and strangers.
            There, the black ant, burdened 
by a crumb, and the weight
of her lacquered armor,
crossing—climbing,
switching, doubling 
back—gnarl and crevice and 
cul de sac.
					
            Pinch-waisted, 
driven on, and trembling,
does she have a notion 
of her own, or is it 
only species 
memory—so
fearless, so abstract?
					
because it is winter everywhere, 
            I spin my cocoon
            I dig my heart a grave
					
Indifferent, a blossom 
drifting, the knob swelling, 
the leaf turned to
shadow: filigree, smudged. 
The petiole now brittle in 
the first cold nights.
                        The burden, relieved, 
weighs all the more
from the guilt 
of its release.
					
Too light, too light, like a sudden 
waking, the sun in your eyes: 
you cannot see for it.			
				
How long will we live 
in this leaf-strewn place, 
thinking we belong
to the sky?