Almost

-

ALMOST


It is on the other end of all there is 

to say that the all there is feels safe

 

enough in the silence to peek out 

from the brush pile and look around. 


It has eaten the peanut butter sandwiches 

from all our traps and stepped nimbly 


over the trigger plates. Regardless 

how we fortified the coop it has made


away with our attempts at domestication, 

left feathers like breadcrumbs for us 


to follow. For all we know it has tunneled

beneath the house’s foundation 


itself, making porous the packed clay

of our permanence. It seems, 


increasingly, that we will have to be content

to coexist in glimpses, each almost


another nibble at the soft part of us that’s eager

to tumble into that burrow of endless entrance.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Bends

-
 THE BENDS           At a certain depth the voices all thrum at the same, garbled pitch.  Both wisdom and the waiting swarm of bees call you up for air,  both wisdom and the Anglerfish draw you deeper. Do you paddle faster  from Leviathan or close your eyes and wait?  Once inside, do you stab the tender heart or caress it? There’s leagues on leagues but we’re in  out of ours and the tanks are low. You die if you come up too quick, you die  if you don’t surface soon, and at this sounding we won’t be dragged out by the light  of the moon. As to good news, t he returned ship sloshes vacant  at port while the wreck is found  at rest on solid ground, home now  to an ecosystem riddled with life.
Read more

Refurbished

-
REFURBISHED The ladybug dies  wedged in wicker,  is spray-painted green.  Disassemble yourself.  Free trampoline.   Not one to jump to conclusions, but if even pipe-smoke throws a shadow in moonlight, nothing is ever full- nothing, right?  The trees agree to lower the veil  and reveal the bare strip of road which runs behind the house.  The white roar of leaving  never leaves, and the porch  light flickers but never goes out.  In a world of partially resurrected things, the quick and the dead dance a tango then collapse in a tangled heap to make  furious love till morning shakes the can and picks a fade-resistant shade of light.
Read more

Holly

-
  HOLLY             — a yellow labrador One day you'll say your childhood  dog’s name and it will sound  a bit odd, flat , as if it  were someone else’s pet  who wandered its way  like a hair into your mouth.  You haven’t thought about her  much the past few years,  but still, you didn’t expect she’d just disappear like that.  The scary part isn’t that she’s gone— you loved her, but it’s a given dogs will run away, true  to their nature. What haunts you,  rather, is the crowd of other constancies milling about your house, the question of which will slip out next if you forget  and leave the door open,  even just a crack. The girl lying next to you? The name of your homeroom teacher? The drive home, those turns you know in your bones? And then  what really troubles you is how   you’ll go on living without them around anymore, how you might even do just fine at it.
Read more