~MARTHA SILANO~

NO REFUNDS, NO EXCHANGES

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Across the yard, despite a fierce unrest,
I can’t help noticing the smudged chin

of an English sparrow, ululations
of cedar waxwings, robins slick

in the sloppy rain. If there were footprints,
they would be cloven. If this were an orchard,

it would smell of fingerlings, marimbas
and timpani, the polished floors

of my twenties & thirties. Not many hearts
have lifted like swallows to the cliffs

above Pomme de Terre lake, not many
have lived much closer than five doors down

from God. And yet I’m no girdle
on this galaxy’s expanding waistline,

and yet I’ve no sacred cows worth swimming
to the South China Sea and back for.

Each morning the silent coyotes
disappear behind my window’s dusty slats

just as an all-night cat in heat slips a paw
through her little cat door. My morning coffee

tastes of the earth, a cell or two of every creature
who’s padded or paddled, crept or crawled,

slithered or swam, who’s foisted a pincer
on an unsuspecting worm. Earwig. Juggler.

Jaguar. Saint. Bombardier riding shotgun
on a leaf held high by an ant.

 
 

© by Martha Silano