Audio: Read by the author. 

 

Warm morning on our back deck— 
slow yoga of the bamboo, 
discipline of the squirrel.
Patience of the chestnut snack 
dropped and lost into a dry
leaf shuffle, then found. Gray claws 
in the green and tan bamboo
I hear behind me. Slow wave 
on the back deck. I want joy 
I do not know I have been 
living. I want peace beyond 
the bounds of my own body. 
Some life in the afterlife.
Some trees, too. A little bird- 

song even. The way I get
up and move on: all that gone— 
days like my lost eyelashes,
just dry leaves curled there and here, 
a few in the gutter, one
or two at my feet, before
someone sweeps the fallen all away.
Is anyone incapable of finding 
a figure for loss? Is there 
actual silence inside
the body? Actual light as well? 
I can’t decide if I want this 
world or another.
Better not; I’d better not. 

 

 

---

Andy Eaton is the author of the chapbook Sprung Nocturne (Lifeboat) and a Hoyns Fellow at UVA. His poems appear in Colorado Review, Kenyon Review (Online), Ploughshares, and Yale Review.