nearly naked, damp skin layered
in fine sifts of soil as the dirt dauber,
mouth mud-full, puzzles outside the greenhouse
I have closed the door and window to,
though it has already flown how many times
to start a nest inside my coat, hoop-hung from the roof.
It hovers at the door, the vent, helicopters
up and down and sideways, as it finds each pin-prick,
each sun-degraded, mouse-and-grasshopper-chewed hole,
trip after trip finding new ones as I patched the old
and now it drones inch-by-inch, scouring the plastic,
staring into this cataracted world.
The wing wisp of air on my face, the secret wish
of the clavicle. Everything has its hunger. Everything.
Though it wastes in wind and rain and sun-scald
so I rise, tugged by the invisible thread of the world’s spell,
my body’s conversation with the unseen,
the unknown, and am pulled to the closed door.
Photo By: Nick Saltmarsh
