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Had I been a fish I would have been a good fish

Had I been an ostrich I would have been iridium and clumsy

As I imagine the best of ostriches are

Had I been a small boy in your elevator I would have closed my eyes

and wiped my nose on your shirt

Had I been a sparrow or black spider I would have nested my young inside you

And had I been your enemy I would have closed your hyacinth wound

This Day and What Is Lost

Whatever the village might say of us

in the trembling of its senior years

as a crowd of pills and antiseptic perfumes

the willowing core of our former age

small as the sandy hearts of bottom dwelling

creatures who meticulously examine their tiny selves

their heated centers inside the water of the world

They measure out the images of our home

between the earth and heaven drifting

a larger and shadowed form

above them

The lives of strangers are sometimes ours

2am and all the day’s hours crumble

Each foreign element moves through your hair

I have seen the periodic table

of your time on earth the pieces of fallen

and down and racing through your crowded vessels

The inside of your mouth opening to swallow

To pretend the heaven that invades you

that sweeps through the embers of Saturday night

is all the healing and mortal earth will ever need

and all the salvation of a crime