Spare

Spare

I

Slivers of white dishes on a wood floor.

White cows in drought-dead fields.

Being dusted, swept away.

Slack nerves make for dropped dishes.

A bus stopped at the edge of a field.

Being dusted; given dust,

made up of what makes the nerves go slack.

Descending the steps of the bus

at the wrong but appointed time.

They know the local words for weeds

and birds. Little world, hard to leave.

The stack of white china was empty and clean.

It was unfinished. It had not yet begun.

III

Dust rises with our every move,

then falls. The bus, green, silver,

white, on a road through the rows

of crops. In the space between

where the bus ends and the train

begins, five thousand small hearts

are slow in the fat-fronted

dickcissel finches, dying from eating

one round of seed, given up to save

the remainder. The girl in her one

good dress sleeps standing up.

The crops will arrive cleanly wrapped,

no trace of a former story.

IV

Wrap the shards in heavy cloth.

They will work into the skin.

We could breathe glass.

They say rain dove, sparrow hawk.

They say buzzard:

spoken things, breathing things, unfixed.

In the book, a kestrel watches a field,

white in the empty margin.

The girl, below the slack strung wire,

waits by the sign, looks up

from her guide to see

an almost weightless thing

jump to hover nine feet from earth,

waiting for the perfect

second to connect.