Remember the human body was trimmed
From something bigger and worse

To start with, it looked abstract
                                                 that first year from the balcony

Piece by small piece the world falls away from us like spores
From a milkweed pod,

We cannot live there and wouldn’t want to
But cherish it as a moral charm.

Because we use the same words
Does not mean we have the same eyes.

We were advertising our urge for life
To ourselves and anyone else who might
Have noticed

It’s like water that gleams at the verge of the fall,
Each instant’s rush
Gemstone.

The gift,
And the unwrapping.

as if they’d given themselves a tree, a sky
full of companions, song
that can travel.

The sparrows drop to my plate, their
tiny drumsticks clamped to their sides