From a Distance, I Saw Bird

I saw broken-necked crow with a beak

like a pliers that became, as I approached,

two pages from a magazine, torn in a few places

and stepped down into the snow,

the muddy underside of a boot

fingerprinted across the woman’s body,

which opened, it seemed, to any odd angle

of gaze—pornographic, shy—as I looked

down into it, the way, years later, I looked

down into you, and your face became a small pond

the cells of my face kept falling into, glittering

a moment on the surface, then gone. I didn’t know

that could happen, my face falling like snow

into more snow. That morning, my breath visible

above the magazine, I was years from the body’s

inlets, its aquatic folds, the tiny rippled scar

on your belly, like the place a beak might have

entered a lake, our bodies built to accommodate,

equally, suffering or love. No wonder we want

to be held, shored by at least a partial definition.

Once, when playfully you let me look

straight into your mouth—at the divoted teeth,

up, in pieces, and assemble a woman

in my brain, how somehow I did know,

even then, that I would never not be falling,

not be letting go, how I lifted her wet

and crumpled body from the snow.