Why are you all in a dither? The moment
Is the peace you seek, everywhere
And always. Amen. But how

To distinguish love from a heart attack
Or the buzzing of a thousand bees?
You know the answer to every question

Is one more question and an emphatic insistence
On chocolate. Howl if you must: take no
For an answer. It’s late in the story

For someone not to die. Let it be the ghost
Of pinking shears that reminds you how lovely
The jagged line can be, that scar

Holding us against our wills.
I am not a guarantee
You’ll have storms or sunrises. I resemble

The thickness of a tree. See the branches
Cover the age of immunity. See the waiting
Rooms of doctors’ offices and labs.

The fascination of every other milky gaze repeats
The run of pathology. I’m asking you
To shake out the wrinkled shirt

Or the fuzzy logic of attraction; reject the words
You love the most.
The swallows circle in a muddy ellipse, swoop

Down just short of colliding with a rafter.
They look. They fly again.
When the biggest signal is a red noise,

I listen to it fade in, then out.
A note arrives in the mist
Of woe. Each day

The flagstone is silent under the shoes
Of every single settler.
And again I watch the waves mount strategy.

The movement is the movement.
Seek it often, in the darkness, and again.
Rise up, retreat, rise up.

The camera’s shutter flags a different scene:
Oyster crackers and swerving flags, half
A pear resting on its round hip.