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.
The Image archive is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.