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.
