Poppy Field

I never saw the woodpecker up close. But I saw its red
infections in the tree. Maybe after everyone dies, you

have to loop yourself to earth and hold on to different red
things. Sometimes you hold on to a woodpecker.

Sometimes the red poppies in the field. Happiness is not
certain. Neither is sadness. Only our thinking about them is.

Last year, I held on to language and it let me go in midair.
This year, I have found the eucalyptus tree, sturdier than

letters. Last year, I tried to give birth to myself. What came
out was fully formed but without blood. This year, I bled so

much that by December, I thought I had bled out my grief.
It turns out, the blood wasn’t grief, but hope, which was

really just too much dying. This year, I’ve stood for hours
looking up at every tree but could never see the whole thing.

The woodpecker kept flying away to make me look again.
Each time, I caught another vertex of its body. Maybe this is

rapture—a color dangling, the small part of the bark locked
away, the corner of the neighbor’s shoulder. A red poppy.

Small bits and pieces of everything at once. My left hand
holding death, my right hand holding dawn. I imagine Gustav

Klimt sitting in a field and thinking about his terrible life.
Then one red poppy. Then two. Three. Four hundred.