Statuary

The late cranes throwing

their necks to the wind stay

somewhere between

the place that rain begins

and the place that it ends

they seem to exist just there

above the horizon at least

I only see them that way

tossed up

against the gray October

light not heavy enough

for feet to be useful or

useless enough to make

gravity untie its string. I’m sick

of this stubbornness

but the earthworms

seem to think it all right

they move forward

and let the world pass

through them they eat

and eat at it, content to connect

everything through

the individual links

of their purple bodies to stay

one place would be death.

But somewhere between

the crane and the worm

between the days I pass through

and the days that pass

through me

is the mind. And memory

which outruns the body and

grief which arrests it.