XLII

the shape concerns me, writing
isn't where she keeps those lists,
some of us are content to tie bones to our feet—
I wouldn't misuse the aurochs and other extinct
Europeans, at times I feel I've been kidnapped myself
by an ashtree needling earth through sky;
she spores her findings in an enormous archive
slowly fading out from the east
a quarry from which
I've tried to exact readings
turning cartwheels past the big window—
it's not animus as we tire to speak
while I sit at the outflanked river
of a forespoken bridge