Casualties

The thistle butterflies near the glass collapse their weight collectively: they

close their wings

*

and it’s night again. It’s night with a scarlet flash of light sparking through

the window’s bones.

*

It only seems like summer here. Go softly into the sparse grasses

and ailing trees —

*

sumac, timothy, cocksfoot, oak — the stems and trunks camouflaging India

ink and eiderdown.

*

Then here again: to be. A simple verb for a complex state,

all bidden

*

in the aftermath of doubt and crutch and die. We are, we are: the sudden

crisis undeterred.

*

Be sorry once in a while, even when the jet’s contrails fall to vapor and quit

opposing what has been

*

and then what is. No one can follow you out of childhood where the butterflies

land, pigments

*

cloaking the wings, the bright cells caustic to the gray reflections, heavy doses

doubled in the glass.