Birds peck sod from your head.

You tell them that the worm 
of thought is buried deep,
that the infinite is beside the point.

It isn’t true that any nest will do.
Some fare better than others.

When a rainstorm presses in,
the crow makes a ruckus,

wakes the entire neighborhood,
each house becoming a lantern.

Pecking through sod is not like
spraying on the rim of the infinite.

Crows wear night to become invisible.
Daybreak, they strut, preen feathers.

Dark is no trouble, except 
when you’re in the thick of it.
                        

how their bellies swell in heat,
heads tilted back

as though in wonder, or
marvel of death,

their view of the eternal,
splashing onto the living,

and I shiver into the steering wheel,
grip it tighter as though life could be

held onto forever. But not until one’s grasp
relaxes does the blurring begin—

the insignificant self
plotting against time,

her casual recklessness at being alive.
                        

There’s the beveled glass kind with rosettes or sunbursts
that massage your hand
as you saunter into another room,

white porcelain ones that remind you of bathrooms,
their spotless marble, 
lavatories that belie bodily functions,

as well as antique brass openers
that slip like wet lollipops
from your hand,

or the fancy Brittany or Flanders kind—more ostentatious
than usual,
black Georgian knob sets

sedate as nuns in their veils,
and you marvel that your hand holds
all the other hands that have opened doors,

but the very best handles are wooden knobs 
that tell stories of the wind
caressing trees before they were chopped

and how each bent as to bow
to this earth that they loved.