Greater Scope
There’s a window in the upper storey
of the carriage house that serves as our garage.
I climbed up to clean it
from the inside, where bugs and lack of rain
had made the glass filthy.
On the floor under the sill —
a small mop of feathers, remains of a bird
that had found its way
past the chicken wire I’d nailed over
every open space against raccoons.
And we know how it died,
and with what hope and cruel frustration
(of which, thanks to me and a bottle of Windex,
another bird will have a greater share).
And we also know how birdlike we are,
enchanted in every entrapment
by the promise of a clear escape
through effort, lore, and esoteric practice,
beating our heads against some great beyond,
beyond good and evil, beyond male
and female, beyond blame, beyond being
a bird-brained bird trapped in an airless loft —
smash, plop, smash — when it would be ever
so much better to retrace our passage
and go out the way we came in.
But who remembers going in,
or thinks of it when going?
It’s greater scope we’re aiming for
and greater scope
we often forfeit when we go.
* * * * *
Working After Dark
Let’s say it’s for my heart,
this gathering of dead branches
to lay on the dormant burn pile
in the woods beside our house,
at the edge of which we buried
your mother’s and father’s ashes
under a small stone angel
now pale in the moonlight.
Let’s say it’s merely exercise,
the necessity strong enough
to require my laboring at night
with a light strapped to my forehead
and a flashlight in one hand,
with only one left free to lift and haul.
Let’s say I finally came inside
because I didn’t want you worrying
or because my batteries failed.
Let’s say that something sensible
was all that drew me to those woods
and all that pulled me back
from where we’ll torch our pyre
once the snow surrounds it.