Nature Poem

---

The scrapyard was a cape of fireflies,

napalm light.

For what was me

I couldn’t say:

the mustard greens shooting sideways,

a half moonrise

over a lake?

Locate the coastline, I say,

the variable, the break.

There were safer places

we never got to.

The wash away

if we never

talk of climate change again.

Notice how a line of clouds runs south

then the day, half over, breaks

out of lack of invention.

The wash back

of the species frame.

In retrospect, even the sun is a shore

though there is no bridge

over which to pass.

I hold on to the cryptic

embroider of before,

and take cover.

Look in the mirror; the glass

swallowing up.

There are windows in the center of our city

that do not open

and I don’t know how to tell you

that our galaxy is dying.

See the little holes in the marsh grass?

That’s how it starts.

I am delirious as a highway bend —

that’s how it starts.

The body was falling

off of me

like a sleeve; if I

could have saved it

I wouldn’t

have.