Ode on a Field in Norwich, Vermont
I keep trying to write a poem about Paul’s meadow
and my body is always five bodies
or no body.
We have no lungs in our cabin,
our one-way-dirt-road-keep-out-pandemic fortress.
Yet in the meadow
we are expansive
as we press bluish squares to tongues and fall all limbless into the field.
Eric’s knees double as he rolls downhill,
Attiya’s laugh a toothless wind
that rips through me unviolently.
All we want to eat is words.
Is this a poem about Paul’s meadow yet?
My head on Olivia’s ankles or maybe Olivia’s ankles have become my head.
Lucy is our acrobat, her handstands
make our arms ache.
Blendered, we wish we could trade genitals.
We have staked out this grass to save us
from certain death. We crush
our crime-scene-outline backs against it weightfully.
We force it to hold us.