Wild Misery

Driving by the cemetery I see

a detour sign by the front gate as if

 

there is an alternative so I park

by the gate, shut my eyes and I can feel

 

flooding in the earth’s throat, swallowing the

long way home. I’m feeding my head. I am

 

putting the birds up to sleep, pretending

I’ve never seen a mannequin, a door,

 

a building, I desire horizontal 

things in the distance—my bones

 

sinking, side to side like air, a faded 

map or some heavy confetti for the 

 

animals to consider. I am so anticlimactic compared 

to birds, the juxtaposition of heart

 

and dirt, lying down feels good, being flat 

and all that… then I take up rocks, tulips, 

 

and old stories, toss them, assemble them

like stars, all sad and sharp as if I just 

 

took all the frontal lobotomies in 

the world and put back together one hell 

 

of a human, but hell is finding out 

you are a wild misery. It must be 

 

difficult for a god to raise a hand 

and say—I didn’t do it. I didn’t 

 

create a detour for you. So where did 

I think I was going today? To talk 

 

with some natural stranger hidden 

beneath all the mud, stone, and story? But 

 

I have decided what to do. I will 

invite winter to live inside me, my 

 

mother, a tree dying to become anything 

but a pile of branch even if there is

 

no internal evidence of the monotonous 

hum coming from outside. The birds are up. 

 

I think that is enough.