A Few Small, Lucky Escapes

It's evening again, then it will be midnight 
followed by dawn, which many describe 
as arriving with a crack—as if someone 
tapped an egg on the rim of the horizon 

so the world could be goldened by its light
or bathed in its viscous fluids. In a small 
house, everyone hears the first one in the toilet
flush his morning tribute down the drain. 

I don't miss that. I do miss the way roosters 
in the neighborhood colored the trees 
with bright orange leaflets of their 
trumpeting. In that time, we believed 

the amulets pinned to our undershirts 
by our mothers would steady and protect us 
from sudden wind gusts or toothless men 
wagging their genitals in the streets. How 

do we know such precarious escapes  
were not indeed the result of someone's 
fervent intercession? Didn't we drink the powdered 
milk that came in cans from factories in Chernobyl, 

yet live without seeing our hair fall out in chunks
or feel our insides boil like overcooked sausages?
In other words, I am trying to tell myself the stones 
haven't all fallen into the gorge. I saw a circle of twigs 

in the arms of the maple and heard an owl 
take up its night patrol. A gull opened its wings 
like a woman shaking snow from her robe. 
What else can we do but write all of this down?


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