Grief moves from box to box

Calendars, emoticons

Screen shots

Of a pangolin and a bat

Having become the animal, I am

Among the float of heavy bees

Every living thing has its natural history

Tree leaves

Mutual need

Insect calipers measuring out probabilities

The wind is full of shifting gears, which the overlords use to exert
        their usual machinations

Financial instruments, public relation messages

There aren't enough scare quotes in the world for this

Hope in the presence of other people I once took as a provisional
        definition

Amend, repair, revise, recognize

That kind of incantation

But an incipient way of thinking links us to an unsecured network

Having been brainwashed as children we must suspect ourselves always

Dogged associations such as a clearing in the woods closing at the rate
        of your own aging

Your arbitrary name-sound wobbling in the same breeze
        that makes it impossible to turn over a new leaf definitively

You can only step into the fray

See what happens in the ecosystem of response

This may be prophetic pragmatism

How do we do together?

Thus it's hair-raising when ancestors grope mystically at my scalp

Union soldiers become Indian hunters, Protestant ministers

Indecipherable women

Cause permanent itchiness

Past futures and future futures

Moth touchdowns have me putting up antennae again as delicate
        landing pads open under a fingernail of moony lyric impulse

Endless exploratory probings

The inflammation of unpeaceful centuries

The respiratory systems

Not breathing well at all

These forests, these streets


Author's Note:

The first line of this poem echoes “Unmarked Boxes” by Rumi as translated by Coleman Barks. The “brainwashing” line was adapted from a work of art by Anne Tardos containing the words “I was brainwashed as a child. There was no other way.”