Sometimes a woman becomes boundary-less,
blurred blue as occluded dawn.

Salt and milk, sometimes she turns
to the song of a sleepy bird.

The violence of flowering May, and—
what is kept, pondered—

one must turn, and again turn.
The gift is pain, loss, a shimmering

in the eye’s corner, just past the windowsill.
Build back, build back from there.
 

You stand, necessary as an owl
casting forward and back, pulling all
into the weave of forgotten twigs, leaves

long fallen, broken off.
                                     Necessary also
to the nuthatch tapping to find if anything
burrows into the deadwood today.

Seen a moment at sixty miles an hour
through rain, white-scarred, charred, slender-still,
already we’re past you, back to the open stubble

of November fields, scattered new developments:
blank windows, bulldozers, signs for lots and condos,
four-lane divided highway all the way.