How the body humbles us
when we are righteous,
as strong as a house
of cards

How the vertebrae crumble, or
we become aware of their hollowness,
our bird bones, the narrow hallways

through which we pass
everything important —
messages and blood

Our circuitry
our wiring

We learn the names of things
we never knew had names
or never knew we had,
so silent were they
in their cumbersome duty

to us

so that now they are familiar;
we can greet them and thank them
each morning as we request
another day of service,

another day.

Connected by fences
jagged teeth
of corn

and crows

a hard pack of dirt
a skim of snow

on more than one farm
in more than one state

ponies

fat as sparrows
set loose
in fallow fields

to eat what’s left.

What this is really all about is,
nature won’t let me move on.
I looked up and it was Christmas,
for all intensive purposes
(as people mistakenly say), but
the ground is still green,
it’s 60 degrees on December 12,
and it feels unlikely but possible
that I’ll go and find a butterfly
or a caterpillar in some ill-advised
stage, all innocent prolegs and
unknowing stripes, even its
filaments filled with stupid,
stupid hope. It drives them
like an engine. They do not know
the calendar, that the whole world
has moved on, the migration
long since over, or that I want
to move on, too, forget my garden
for a few months, bleach all the
mesh enclosures where wonders
occurred, be empty again,
soundless and hopeless again,
until spring.

Natalie and Luz and the San Diego Zoo channel,
the bed and the electrodes, the wires and tubes,

all of it;

he wishes it could be part of everyday life,
that everyone could experience this —
sleeping in a hospital,

trying to solve a mystery.

But I should be watching The Golden Girls.
Is it the one where Dorothy has had enough,
kicks Rose with her flat-soled slouch boot,
hard enough to send Rose spinning out
onto the lanai? Meanwhile, Blanche
is looking foxy, sipping a julep, but
secretly nursing some rueful discontent
that will bubble up into a rage against
Sophia, who clutches her wicker purse
and mutters something incomprehensible
about palm trees, the heartbreak of
being immortal, actually unable to die.