We took down the bird-feeder Because they told us to, even though None of the birds here are sick yet— We live in a period of excessive Pestilence, which sounds like a metal band Or the beginning of a tongue-twister Except it’s not so hard to say, Only to live in, red thread struggling Against passage through a needle’s eye, The space usually occupied by a rich man But they’ve all shot themselves into space, As if we aren’t already there; money In uncountable currency makes black Death savory, …

too busy living to hit record I dread the day your side-mouth impressions wry as a country song slip from my ridges and you with freckles real or imagined those teeth so honest eyes like a lightning strike a fox’s cackle, wicked and you the thinker in profile long fingers on knowing hands the whir-click of hidden clockwork I want to collect every likeness in my pocket an expression like coinage set in copper what if twenty years gone you are burnt …

On an afternoon walk, a cold wind went through me like a shot (whiskey, brandy, something dark) and he came to me, my grandfather. Winter like a dog at my fingertips—my first dog, Cochise, gorgeous, gentle, fur like snowfields. After Cochise died, my grandfather sat me down on the porch and said, “Everybody lives, and everybody dies. It’s called the circle of life.” And it made so much sense at eleven, …