The trees, the ones
she loves,
                  are desperate—

my neighbors
say, when what they mean
        are deer—the foragers, the few at a time, fair

He bought her a heart-shaped box of chocolates
Once a year. One life, one woman,

Led them across a busy street—two lines of traffic.
He started a lost colony for his parents.

She puts her ticking wrist to her ear and hears a house
Full of Tock from the clock that is lacking a stem.

But quiet was a difficult thing to be.
The heart makes a jump-start sound.

Should the painful condition of irreversible paralysis
last longer than forever or at least until
your death by bowling ball or illegal lawn dart

Many fish in those murky ocean caves
of Mexico, Brazil, Croatia, Oman

have no eyes.
Though in the streams outside—

woe our good kaspar is dead
who will wear now the burning flag in a braid who will crank the coffee grinder
who will lure the idyllic deer