THIS FUMBLING

 

Nonetheless, morning comes,

as it always does.

I wake before dawn,

feed the cat, pour my coffee

into a Ball jar, unaware

that you have left this world

sometime in the night.

The radiator makes a creaking

sound; the phone is silent.

This fumbling, this calm unknowing

is in itself a small corner

of paradise I will recognize

only long after the fact,

when its comfort has moved

elsewhere, and I cannot

hope to enter again.

THE FAWN

 

Walking to work through the half-dark soot of early morning, chemicals still clinging to the damp air, I am startled by the motionless gaze of a young deer, peering through the cemetery's black iron fence, solitary, unimpressed and unafraid by my presence. White mist, like the small splashes along her ribs, hovers around her. For the past two nights, whole blocks of this street have gone up in flames, set off by protestors or outside agitators, blackened brick and the empty easels of storefronts now waiting for whatever sunlight can break through. And on the opposite side of the street, this thin-legged beauty nibbles calmly at the grass and flowers, as if saying plainly, "This land was here long before you and your dead arrived." Having satisfied her belly and curiosity, she is gone seemingly in the flash of a single leap, an agility reserved for the eternally hunted. While I continue on, the interloper in this scene, my own awkward frame lumbering along, moving further and further out of view.

A CALL IN THE NIGHT

 

What to make, then, of this lone bird calling out, long before the first glimmer of morning light? Maybe she has dreamed a human dream, I think, and woke in a terrible fright. Or maybe, like all of us, she just wanted to make sure that the world was still here. She hears the sound of her own voice echoing, one small proclamation among the silence of leaves and stars, her voice declaring only her own bird-ness. She feels the breeze, the air shifting imperceptibly around her song, feels the breath of something larger stirring in the dark. And she is at ease once again.