When we erase, we become clearer
and maybe it’s enough
to let days degrade, to set fire
to dark and its long-sinning
dreams. This morning, the sun walks
through the living
room window, already wearing
a willful fullness, and I stand as a lizard
drags a katydid
across my garden path. The world is under
attack and I never take photos
of the critical moments, the ones that keep me
westerly, thistled, without
criticism. The news keeps collecting
its pursuits, and all the hope remains
in silhouette. By noon a development
at the end of the road
is ornate with unyielding
hammering. Above, a copter shakes
the air to outcomes, and cloud-skeins
form, long
as the fissures in mountains. Sometimes we halt
to the sequence between tolerance
and guilt, to the nests
and not the walls. Hundreds
of ants turn circles
on the steps from the door
down the hill. Nothing else moves
and then the trees. When later I listen
to the police chief
reveal that his force
is told to “shoot center mass,” not aim
for shoulders, I breathe
into my palm, inside
myself. The skin of an image. One in power
asks runaways
why? And I pretend there are pearls
to the future,
that no one is dying today. We all see everything
good happens with the flesh
of tongue that knows sweet,
so we must wrack the rough pauses
and plural
ends. I notice again the sharp shave
on my husband. I’ve been stealing
miracles from the cacti
to annihilate every other want. How unremarkable
life is: the dry reach
of the pastoral, the barbs
below a few straps
of owls shaping a constellation.