I didn’t know she curled up
in the dog basket
under the table,
a spaniel croissant,
smelling of faster heartbeats
and dough, waiting,
pressing fingers into the tufts
between leathery-paw outcrops,
buttered ears and whisperings,
when he came
home.
She didn’t know I stood
in the yard making like a tree
tied to the clatter, bump, slam
dropping like raindrops drop
onto my outstretched hands,
house-held, resenting
the latch-click thunder split,
after the slick light porch torching,
‘Come in now!’
Now we are still for all
the wrong reasons:
I creak when I grow,
this tree a river,
the sky an ocean I hurtle into
my xylem waters breaking over
unseen, unspoken, vascular
copings;
She bakes to perfection
a sugary, smile-bedecked doll,
yoga stretching, muscled
for the practiced coil
farings.
If we speak at all of Syria
we ventriloquize surprise
at children shaping bodies
to the logic of fear,
along the ridges proffered
by the last elementary,
a stroking of dog’s ears
and making like trees
in the rain,
the vestigial wild, a nestling,
protect against commune.
We know it is necessary
to make a tramp
of the heart.