A butterfly’s flapping over Costa Rica,
it’s sometimes considered, could initiate
the chain that leads to tornados in Toledo,
hopping and ripping the heart
from every-other quotidian home.

Or maybe its deft stretch-and-glide
could instigate the violent Mississippi’s
surprising rise beyond its subtle, stolid realm—
the dainty queen behind that vast rebellion.

So I suppose I could blame this monarch
that reigns today’s thermals—that just
licked six purple puffs in beach grass
then juked my breezy mind—
for the nicknamed waves of catastrophe
soon to sweep a sleeping Gulf,
the nightly news even proving it
via weather patterns green-screened
before the stocks and sports.

But instead I’m turning my grateful face
toward the nor’easter just breaching
the stony coast of my brain: when it
rattles shutter to sash to rafter,
I’ll unlatch the deadbolts, throw open
the windows, and ready the musty
guest bedroom of my heart in welcome.

Three teen deer have begun of late
to make daily dusk-time stops out back,
their flat flanks and thick, angled necks
depicting stumps and trunks that then
move and materialize and re-blend
as their busy muzzles forage-and-
freeze them across the far lawn. How
ever inventive their camouflage. Of course,
once I look up, so do they, slightly
white faces and twice-twitching ears
alert to any budge. And if I stand,
even gradually as a yogi, they hop
and spin and crash backward into
slits that open in the brush and oaks
that just as quickly close behind them.
I’m showing you nothing you don’t
know, and know you also know that
doesn’t matter, that you, too, would stop,
lift your face, and love them every time.

Eighty-eight degree cicadas.  A cat
who knows to wash with those luffas
we call paws. This morning’s lacy
light, which also moves the leaves.
Squirrels, not a slow-twitch muscle
in the lot. Cilantro, basil, parsley
in little painted pots. Clock with its
tick-it, tick-it, like a rhythm, like a
tiny cycle. The safest story behind
whatever, like the whether this or that:
Garage door? Sycamore? Extension cord?
No, only a chair on its own, cobweb
in its corner. Yes, just so: a pure
urgency for more silence, less chance
to become unlucky. Grass, branch,
dismantled fence—emblems,
all, for sewing on the sleeve between
one’s lumbering sorrows, one’s
existentialities. The local birds,
anxious and aboard their feathers.
Herons, somewhere, hungry
in those shallows, working hinges
we call elbows. Needles, maples,
manic ant hills, the clouds I’ve noticed,
the clouds I’ve let get away. Gray
but expanded asphalt, dark black
in the cracks and crescendos of kids
skidding, the littlest always last,
the largest largely never. Heart forever
conscientious, so clever under cover.
Mother twitching while also shrinking.
Wall and popping nozzles during
early morning sprinkling. Lists
of lists, reminders to remind. Beach
at the end of every westward road.
Stairwell, bike rack, barbecue utensils.
Tail on the string on the bamboo chimes,
waving in what we will call
the wind that simply isn’t visible,
stirring an island song out over
lawn, curb, and manhole cover, over
everything, which is all I’ve got.