You go out and sit in the crucible
that isn’t dark yet but precedes it,
where the bee whirs suspended
in a white thread of its own making.
You think of how maybe it’s possible
to turn back the small waves of brooding
that touched everything all morning,
how with effort you might find
some footing as this vehicle lurches
ever onward through something
difficult called the future.
And while it’s true we’re creatures
of appetite, never completely appeased,
the sweetgum continues to drop
its everlasting arsenal of brittle
brown pods— they can puncture your skin,
send a sepsis raging through the veins
and into your brain or heart. What
will you do then when you’re truly
paralyzed, unable to hoist your voice
or a hand to signal in the air? Better
to learn how the smallest stones divide
the onrushing current; how the eddies swell
with sorrows that break then eventually recede.