Poetry |

“The Shape of Moving”

The Shape of Moving

 

 

Someone traces the wind back to where it started,

back before the dinosaurs, and wins a big prize

 

and ends up committing suicide somewhere

out in the desert, which has been getting hotter

 

by the day. It’s where the wind ends, his note says,

and no one finds him for so long he’s been eaten

 

by insects and vultures — all but his bones

and cap, stained by his sweat — just enough

 

to identify his DNA. And as I’m reading his story,

the woman I love most in the world comes into

 

the kitchen and tells me her life has been wasted,

then looks out the window to marvel at the blooming

 

flowers no one has planted, the buzzing

bees no one has summoned. Yesterday

 

a neighbor stopped by to tell us the yellowjacket

wasps were swarming through the woods, stinging

 

every human they could find, and when we wondered

why they were so restive, he ventured a theory

 

that all the new houses were disturbing the soil

where the wasps hibernate, and he wondered if they thought,

 

somehow — if wasps think at all — that they might

sting us away? When he left, we packed up

 

a bottle of wine and some glasses and walked up

to the man-made lake at the edge of the woods

 

a mile or so away. We sat and watched the evening

blow across the water like a small bird might do

 

before landing in the trees on the other side, to sing.

And so we drank our wine and listened for a while,

 

then slowly walked back through the darkness.

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