steps under the eaves to escape
the weather and appears at the window.
And because it is night she blinks

like simile back at herself just as someone,
inside looking out, is unsettling into
a street-clothes’ insomnia. Going unseen.

             ~

These are the two lungs that bellow a locked cage
of rib. These the four limbs, their nomenclature
of Latin ligament and bone—here an iliac’s cradle
of winged incivilities, there a wind-knock of sternum.

Some knobs of joinery. One could go on, or not,
touching slumberless parts of oneself, making like
a child a mantra of what connects to what—or of
counting sacrificials. One’s blessings.

             ~

Growing so distant from the hope of yourself
that, likewise, you reenter old-growth

forests of deciduous and pine,
their streams and ponds

edged with a shadow of green’s
numberless shades.