a sparrow lands on the barbed wire
and drops like a stone
how many generations until
we learn to pick the post instead
i go on living like what else is there
but time to count, ease to hope for
it’s a friday night, apocalypse outside
and the silty river in me rushes
with melted snow—ancestors
kneel, huddle, wring the clothes
past the fence and a few beats
above silence is the sound
of what we call witness
out here, it is nothing
to glimpse loopholes
in time’s passing
two women take all fours
in a field, match the crowns
of their heads
like the slow pose of eden
this kneeling collapses
both yesterday and centuries
after our children are dead
a version of this myth
puts birds on their backs
in another, a mirror is painted black
in yet another, a handless woman
balances a pear on her lips
did you turn to her
or was it a trick?
the husk of illusion
about passing on sings along
what crouches in our bones
we will never truly know
like the sparrow, i am learning
to land on the post
like the post, every year, i look
a little more like the earth