Michele Glazer

Thereafter

Spring & all that

It’s the end of the world and everything’s true if you only say so.

Console yourself in knowing

little, little flame. We go out.

Now from the trachea rings and loops ornithologists gather the sound air might have made where it gathered and moved through acoustical cartilage—

pressing through a sequence of small rings of bone. the-moa the-moa is the sound a bird made taking leave long ago

Now word arrives from a distance that the last great white rhinoceros with viable sperm has died, in san diego.

Of the two left does it matter if they are sisters, or if one’s the other’s mother.

What vagueness has over taken us like a slow ripening cataract the eyes accept.

that part of us that lets what grows grow where ever, wants to;

that part fists out sweet

woodruff, crowds the overly exotic, whose little jack gleaming whitely in the pulpit exudes a pure cock’s rebuke to the oversweet I planted.

I planned for.

Got unruly having to rearrange thusly

proportions that are not mine & we feed them flickers.