The fallen branch is a whale mouth agape
Elephant eyes in white birch watch as
vines snake in slow coils toward the sunlit
canopy. This place is a zoo. Why before
did I notice only trees? We are not to speak
of pets after a funeral but I can tell you I still
feel the soft bag of his body cooling
in my arms. I crawled in tears for weeks
mining the carpet for papery claw husks
and palmed them like a witch. There are
monks who sit at length with corpses to
meditate on how decay is a swell garden
party or how vanity is pointless. I retch
at writhing grains of fly larvae but here—
where inky puddles digest skeletons of
spent leaves, where a pine’s splayed torso
sinks beneath the hungry weight of moss—
I could live here. Today I saw a hubcap
twirl away from its host and fall with a cymbal
crash to the curb. I can hope glittering roadside
shards held the sun there, that later a taproot
wormed through the asphalt. Today I met
the white halo of feathers around a robin’s eye.
How many of those might fit in a palm?
Header photo by Jacelyn Yap.
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