what am I to do with my imagination—& the person in me
trembles—& there is still
innocence, it is starting up
somewhere
even now, and the strange swelling of the so-called Milky Way, and
the sound of the
wings of the bird as it lifts off
...
what is coming, what is true, & all the blood, millennia, drained to
stave off
the future, stave off,
& the armies on the far plains, the gleam off their armor now in this
bird’s
eye, as it flies towards me
then over, & the sound of the thousands of men assembled at
all cost now
the sound of the bird lifting, thick, rustling where it flies over—only
see, it is
a hawk after all, I had not seen
clearly, it has gone to hunt in the next field, & the chlorophyll is
coursing, & the sun is
sucked in, & the chief priest walks away now where what remains
of
the body is left
as is customary for the local birds.
—Jorie Graham, “Embodies” (excerpt)
