Where the bladderwort and water lily
give way to bulrushes and pickerelweed
and cattail heads nod hugely high,

A problem muy adentro, she tells him, deep
inside her—a metal loop like a piece
of Satan, but the doctor who was supposed

The things I saved up there—mantis legs, cat fur,
porcupine quills tied with twine. I thought
this was religion. To climb through leaves

Though reverence may not save us
we must carry ourselves
with reverence.

In the rose and pale gold of
                                                             declining light
I brace my stiff feet on dry leaves, and grasp

Between my back fence and the drainage ditch,
the county’s
                             no-man’s land, I’d

No small feat for Grief to doff
his mourning cloak, the velvet
heft of it, and its scarlet naught

The elation of naming, that dispassionate
stance, of course it could not last. As all

After washing your face and leaving it
in the basin of water from which it stared
up at you as you left the room,

I have seem them growing wild by the hundreds
along a riverbank on a Pacific island.
As I dipped my oars silently so as not to frighten