Corpses litter the yard—
the early spring rabbit kit
the dogs dragged off the road, 
old opossum expired who knows how, 
the unidentifiable hunk of red
muscle dressed in greasy fur—
these do not glow or flutter
as the bereaved drake’s mate
freshly squashed upon the gravel 
lane. They fairly blended camouflaged 
until grass suddenly greened 

this morning. My husband buries 
the bodies of our dead pets 
before I wake, before I return 
from work. If I did not know him
I might suspect he killed 
and hid the evidence. Some
men do. Hardened warrior, he
knows the detritus of human death.
He wishes to spare me any.  

Yet a limp lump of dead mouse
ceremoniously laid upon the altar
of our door mat, the rigid bird body
placed before the dryer
he tosses by tail, by wing
with aplomb through the front door
into the lawn
for me to discover and move
as though I somehow love 
these wild losses less.
                        

Tell the children he drifted 
loose in a warm room, dreamt
himself to a mound of satiny ash. 

Tell them the dead don’t feel 
anything anymore. In the retort 
a body doesn’t burn like the trunk
 
of lightening-struck cottonwood
smoldering orange coals for days. 
Doesn’t start to a pugilistic stance

like a prize fighter
fists cocked 
to bloody a nose. 

We are more like 
Styrofoam:
flesh shrinks back from bone;

fat melts, drips, hisses feeding
the flames; muscle sears
like thick steaks on a grill 

left too long, overdone, blackened
to char; a skull may shatter
but not explode. There’s a difference

I guess. Wait: Tell them
he was a kite, a diamond frame
of balsa overlain with yesterday’s

news and obituaries, a tail 
of cotton twine and rag bows. 
Tangled among treetops

for so long, that same cradle-
rocking wind at last swept him
to the sun, his penultimate goal.
                        

	for George Patrick Norris (1949-2023)

Behold, how sons of the seed
that survived an ancient flood,
these ambitious men
of an infant nation, 
appropriate the creator’s
multi-hued promise to never again
drown humanity beyond redemption.

Lo, how modern wizards 
transmogrify the illusion
of bowed pastel ribbons
bent against our retinas
to perforate four million cones,
bloom poison daffodil, burst 
a blue hullaballoo and green 
hurly-burly on the brain. 

Observe, how abracadabra
refracted light becomes a metaphor
for a pastel spectrum of poison vapors, 
washed out shades of the psychedelic
palette protesting on the home front,
code-named like spies dispatched to covert 
missions and for the tinted plastic barrels 
carrying the noxious dioxins overseas: 

Agents Green, Pink, Purple, Blue, White--
and the ones to malinger, Orange, 
Orange II, Orange, III, and the new
and improved Super Orange--
concoctions of contemporary alchemists
who weaponized unstable isotopes: 
DOW, Monsanto, Hercules, Inc. 

Regard, disturbances in foreign fields,
powdered clouds of phosphorescent fire 
rained from bowels of the great iron birds 
of Elijah’s prophecy, hovering
above denuded jungles posing in profile, 
thwapping rotors forcing the gentle
browning putrid vegetation to flutter,

fanning the smoke twisting madly, 
spiraling indiscriminately into open 
lungs, crossing porous membranes,
wafting into demilitarized zones,
conjuring cripples and orphans,
traversing oceans, stowing home
in the breasts of the poor dumb 
beasts just following orders. 

Witness the scorched and limbless, 
the scarred and skinless, the cancers
of the conscripted, the chalk-white 
marble ash-veined tombstones, 
their number increasing daily, 
modern griefs of Ares’ handiwork. 

Look not away from the child 
born with no eyes, an ancient trope,
a seer for a new century.