A lung X ray reveals streaks of low-lying clouds
obscuring mountain ridges. Skin, wildly sensitive
to the touch, maps fever firestorms. Today wind
runs its hand along jonquils planted in a woods
alternating white and gold, white and gold, then
green and at the edge of the last bloom, fox cubs
leapfrog over their den’s dirt roof. Red-tailed hawks guard a recent nest,
swoop and call to run me off, but I push down
into new grass, search for tissue of fiddleheads. Is it so that all what’s left is only one
life inside us? I am not afraid of little breath be-
tween twelve small spaces. Cerebral cortex rises like oxygen. I am more animal
than I’d ever sensed.
