OF WILDNESS AND CULTIVATION

The beating heart of a sequoia

         is the god we make our altars to—

a garden is a world of entropy

         the bare truth— weeds will always

overtake the cultivars.

         I took my poodle to the garden—

his body tensed with the desire

         to chase the tiny baby rabbit

alone in diaspora from his kind.

         I could feel the trembling of the gray

soft thing. I held tightly to my dog—

        the rabbit remembered to escape.

Inside the house, my darling

       licked the sockets of my eyes

to dissolve my vision of his wildness,

      licking deeper still to my teeming brain

to erase images of blood and fear—

      his muzzle sticky and crimson.

WHAT ESCAPED THE BURNING OF THE COSMOS

I pour the robin’s egg

                                blue ashes of the incinerated

universe into the paper

                               cone I made.  It funnels

through the rent

                              in what they call space-time.

The Pleiades gave me

                             sterno & matches

for the job. Not even crabs

                                complained.  I always

wondered how nothingness

                            would feel

but emptiness is unknowable

                           unless it rubs 

against the full. I want

                          to grieve my children

& feel guilt for shooting

                         stars and lilies. I think

about the tongues of dogs.

                         I warned I was a firebug.

I hear a wayward

                        starling sing

and see the last tick trek

                       across the tundra.