Like crows huddled to roost
through winter nights, your flock
of feathery dendrites shifts, relinquishing
the blessings of oblivion. The synapses
distill calligraphies of dew.
What parts are gone?
Somewhere else the surgeon molts
a sky-blue plumage. You can hear
a nurse speak kindly, and reply,
but memory stands with one foot on each rim
of a crevasse that swallowed tunes that the
anesthetist’s radio played.
What parts are gone?
Their territories sliced up, paper-thin,
are deeply stained. The names emerge:
atlas of villages in type almost
too small to read. Under high power, past
a plexus of swept lanes and plots aligned
with ancient walls, a hero in a square
raises a famous blade. But in the air
crows wheel and call, leaving all this behind.
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2018
