I am not the only one in these parts playing
at a body. Call it
dismemberment, call me a clumsy
ghost. See how behind
the house, above the creek, tree
roots choke,
the thickest like mothering arms covering
the water,
bearing all the bank’s meats on their back.
Once here
I met a hand-sized turtle, stole him,
built a cardboard
house in the garage, before I knew
I too was capable
of death, the giving, the receiving in fine vials.
Then, I returned
him to a patch of pine. He escaped me with his life.
Today, a cardinal buoys
up like a windblown rag, roams the naked
birches. The bright
wind spits language across the performing
skins, and I try to read us,
try to find a syntax here in this place
all shrunken:
this culvert. This ball court now bruised.
This gravel path un-
raveled, unused. This creek bank.
This rank
earth returning first to my body,
then to its hair,
its teeth. It still recalls this girlish breath.
