Do you follow my logic here?
I mean, are you and I in
cosmic sympathy — do we
listen to the same music
of the same spheres? Do we
make a shape together,
other than the shadows
of ourselves? Is this
where my bats want to
roost, under your eaves?
Do you have bats, too —
and can we ever get down
to brass tacks, something
like real conversation,
as one pink cloudbank
slides toward another?

It is optional that I join
The Family of Man,
shed my tail, begin eating
something other than fruit.
It is optional, and yes,
it is an option, and yes,
I’m strongly considering it.
But first, I want to know
what I’ll gain from this,
other than power (a tail
is pretty powerful, too,
you know), heart disease,
a few material comforts.
Will I have to destroy
my nest of leaves, never
make another? Because
let me tell you, that’s
not the worst way —
making a nest — to pass
the last hour of day/
first hour of night.
I’ve heard it said
that this is happening
whether we like it
or not — that choice
is an illusion against
this force of nature.
I don’t understand that
as well as I understand
figs. I don’t need that
as much as I need leaves.

The ghost of a goldfish
after
its small body
succumbed
to our mistaken care,
was placed in a jar
on the mantel
until we could get to it,
the bitter task of
tossing it into the lagoon,
a dead, diseased fish
to possibly infect, kill
other fish —
another mistake.
So many compound errors
when we intended only care,
at least a measure of love.
And now the lagoon is to be
poisoned,
all the fish killed
and others put in —
bass, maybe, or sunfish,
I don’t know. But I do know
it won’t be carp or koi, or
a whole neighborhood’s cast-off
goldfish, the living and the dead.
Somehow, this too, feels like
a failure,
as if our goldfish is
no longer welcome there,
in the resting place we chose,
not even in phantom form,
the remembering bones
of other fish.

In some other time that I cannot now place,
I once watched a ballroom dance competition on PBS
until it all began to make sense — the hairspray
and bright blush, the spangles and flesh-colored
nylon panels — as necessary equipment for
what was certainly a sport, like ice skating
without blades, or dressage in which the partners
are both at least nominally of the same species
and one does not ride atop the other’s back,
except in rare moments when, say, the woman is
lofted onto the man’s shoulders, spun across
his upper back, then set down with a gentleness
that must be at least a bit deceptive. Bones
are involved, and sweat, and ragged breath,
as well as a workmanlike decorum that denies
any notion of sex. This, even as they dance
around it, sex, with roses in their teeth,
in a parlor ringed by judges, held up by
an artifice that is stronger, more fragile
than any of us is ever allowed to see.

So then I couldn’t get it working,
the Sterno for the buffet pan
of Harvard beets
or Johnny Come Lately
(oops, Johnny Marzetti),
and it seemed like the whole event
was about to fall apart
under the weight of too many
expectations and bated breaths.
I can’t stand to be watched
while I work. That’s how
I once dropped 13 dinner plates
all at once, while the toothless
kitchen manager hissed in triumph.
So anyway, I don’t like lighters
ever since I singed my nail on one
and it smelled like burning hair.
I couldn’t take that at all.
Sometimes this job gets to be
too much. I can’t say
how I want to go —
young or old, in a fiery crash
that makes the news, or
in my sleep, or the usual,
which is from here to nursing home,
and then maybe to hospice, and then
a lingering letting go of everything
important.
So I don’t begrudge them,
the angry old men and women
who only want their party tonight —
or this afternoon — their
plastic glass of sparkling wine
and for me to seem more competent
than I really am.

They said it would snow a lot
and it did snow a lot.
Cars got stuck, and we all did
what we always do. The thing
where kids throw snowballs
and sled down the hill, and
we all take pictures, or video,
to document this snowfall,
this child. In the history of
the world, the only child
to ever encounter snow —
or at least, the only one
who belongs to us, or one of
few who belong to us. We also
help push cars away from curbs,
wonder if a package will arrive
(and know it will not) and
whether tomorrow we’ll be able
to travel to some other place.
Our boots make puddles by our
back doors. We step in it,
the melted snow. The outside
shocks us, how it comes inside.
As if it’s welcome here. As if
it could ever live among us,
become another child.

Blind as an apple
that only wants to sleep
at the end of its branch,
has no idea what it contains
or that wasps will soon
frenzy over it on the ground,
its skin split, its wine-
vinegar insides browning
in the sun and the air.
It doesn’t know that
even this is not
the end, its seeds
passing through
some creature —
a squirrel, maybe,
drunk and fending off wasp
stings — so that everything
can begin again, as it always
has, as it always will, from
first apple to last apple,
every apple in between.