Anatomy

the sinews that bind bone to
flesh, pinkstrong elastic, have that
fluidity that yet allows our
movement

ranging and arranging over the
mapland that is ours, speeding over
the veins of highways: blue, shaded
by leaves: green

and the heart's meat is a dark meat--
throbbing and pulsing--no pretty
valentine this, but wetly red,
damp-chambered, going

pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, as hidden birds
sing their evening song---from what
trees now, do they sing, since the
uprooting?

dusk, when light blue darkens, darkening
to night, that is when they sing--
sometimes one alone, so cutting clear
as if a message meant for her heart

to sing in tune, walking on geometric
paving stones, the windows now dull
and dark, many paned, brittle, the
bricks arranged just so--as they

were engineered, the cement spread,
the stones placed-so-ringing round
this world fenced in by green, by
green, by green

mud-luscious, puddle-wonderful, after
spring parkinglots the lovely wet
will give way to winter and the
thin lace skim of ice easily

broken by the sole of a boot. We humans are hardier
creatures--season to season we
travel together, keeping each other
warm, feeding each other with

flesh and a little wine, ruby red
in the bottle, hands together twined,
one half of the other, one enclosed in
the other, fine movement that was