If you’re lucky, before the tumors begin to sprout,
or the plaque seals off your heart,
or the tremor spreads from your hand
through your body like a tuning fork’s hum,
you’ll learn that maybe the only decent thing
you can do with this life is create
the least amount of harm. So don’t
open the sliding glass door silently as a shadow
and charge wolf-like at the squirrel
hanging upside down on the birdfeeder
as he scarfs sunflower seeds with a stoner’s zeal.
Learn to shut off that thing in you
that smiles when grace stammers into panic:
the triple axel ends in wipeout, Hamlet
forgets his lines then gets the giggles,
the seven-tiered wedding cake that can’t fall
falls. Admit it—you’ve laughed a little
at misfortune like this, maybe even rooted for it.
But now in this liminal space of early middle age,
where you can almost hear ambition hiss
like a doused fame, stop. Listen to the morning.
Watch the squirrel enjoy the feeder, how he eats
as if no one were there to stop him—how he eats
as if he knows someone will be there very soon.

 

 

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James Davis May is the recipient of the 2026–27 Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship. His third book of poems, My Lost Saints (Louisiana State), will be published in the spring of 2027.

 

 

 

Photo by John Oswald on Unsplash