I’m Going to Bed When You Go to Bed
Let someone else learn the borders of every country’s will,
the length of one impartial wall, the largest diaspora of children
who will die before the age of three. Let someone else
lay on her back and shoot museum animals strung midair, tongues
and eyes extinct, the patterned coats healed of bullet hole
and scent. Let her learn the names of deserts and ferns, the smallest
mammal, the moon’s lacus and valles of weather and season.
I’m learning the algorithm for raking leaves. I’m walking the dog,
looking up when she looks up, hearing the V of geese, watching
fluctuation of wing beat and wing. Let someone else write
poems for polar bears, orangutans and honey bees, whales
beached inside their roughed-up skins. Let someone else mourn
the last dusky seaside sparrow, Ammodramus Maritumus, a male,
the end of the line. I’m going to bed when you go to bed.
