Like a tiny armored vehicle, you rove

the hay-colored field of my coffee table

bedraggled little green thing, no one

can tell me your name but your bright

copper eye startles and repels me

as I watch you climb into my milk

and I take you with the cup, leave you

outside where it is newly spring

and the air is cold. At first

I don’t understand that the case

you drag behind you like an empty

bullet shell is the place where

you were born just now, that the bags

you carry oddly furled at your sides

are lacy green wings, as new and wobbly

as your awkward young self, that soon

will open and bear you away;

you will know exactly where to go

right then, without even a thought

and I’ll go back to my labyrinth

of could be, what if, and was.

 

From Wild Domestic (Pearl Editions, 2011).

Used here with the author’s permission.