more than the millions of unsung buried in the potter’s
field off pelham bay, more than the estuary where tides
fold freshwater into saltwater & spit their bones into a knot
of krill, mackerel, menhaden, pale glow like a stray moon
wandered to the wrong side of the cosmos, slunk in a lost
shark’s jaws, predators plucked with rising ocean
temperatures from the atlantic & whisked a hundred miles
down the shoreline, it’s the cherry blossoms’ orderly bloom
in april, unquestioned embrace of death in may, petals strewn
like stars stretching so deep into deep space only astronomers
know them by name, that really gets to me. after the gray
-haired man draped in paisley sleeping beneath a straw hat
against a yoshino tree, the little girl hiding behind her
mother’s wedding gown, cameras flashing, buzzing
around the bridal party’s pink-cerise dresses
like a honeybee, the flattened cotton-candy blossoms
are simply swept into a dustbin every year on the day
you died. there are tons, & i mean tons, of spent petals
scattered across parks, lawns & ponds, routinely removed
& replaced, a broom brandished & taken to task by a botanic
garden employee but a blossom is underfoot awaiting
its own interment when a beloved texts me, made it through
another year of that one. we all want to make it somewhere
past the point no one thought you’d ever pass: leaving
the party at 2am, alone thank God, a fist of valium
from the bride. we settle for miracles: walking without
wanting, wonder in the weeds like the first man to hear
a parrot chatter, the bewilderment of a woman
who’d never known a note of music fainting the first time
she heard beethoven. i know it’s you stuck inside the lightbulb
flickering in my kitchen. i keep it humming days on end, marvel
at how much dark you continue to cut through.
a cluster of stars pierces fog like teeth in the mouth
of a shark. we made this world. devoured everything
but the pit. it isn’t enough to cook the ocean, trap the raptorial fish.
we drag her home & stuff her, friends take selfies, their heads
in her maw, pretend we were never in any danger at all.
