Tell me again what it isn’t
but what it looks like.
The minnows, boneless
and so easily understood.
Eye, eye, intestine, spinal cord,
frenzied mouths in the muck.
Their sight, pinhead dark
through which I enter.
The night heron just now appearing.
Tacit spear of its mouth
pulled and held still.
Ideas of violence, like petals
resting on the water’s face.
Downtown, the counter-protestors
slung with rifles.
In the locker room, my head down.
Do you ever write love poems?
Everyone I love is working
in me, their desires becoming my own.
I want to make sense.
I am not at all precious
with what I see.
Shy in its bowl of daylight,
the ebbing moon.
In its same phases. Always changing,
but in a way you can name.
Some minnows belly up, flakes of salt
in the limestone pool.
The fish that live become heavy.