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40 Someone Near Is Dying To sit for hours by your bed is to gaze at the day’s periphery, the chickadee at the feeder fidgeting like a four-o’clock insomniac. My desire is to leap into the midst of forgetfulness, its dreamy scatter. What does your every move show if not, I am still alive? If this moment, bare as twigs, is the only one, let it be the limb, in its loose skin of lichen, tilting at clouds— not the branch stunted from lack of promise or light. The beauty of Spanish moss is the curl of its beard lifted by wind; of brown 41 grass, its inclination toward green; of the chickadee, its brave opinion of strangers. Listen, Mother— thunder, out of season: an old woman at the end of her day, humming. ...

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