I was walking
home from the bank
and there was
a funeral
—white carnations,
twenty or so
mourners,
an intimate affair.
Later, when I
passed by,
only a large plastic
container for garbage
on wheels remained—
absence greater
than presence
had been.
At home, in a framed
photograph above
the mantelpiece,
buffalo plummeted
from a cliff,
tumbling
head over tail,
propelled forward
by their own
considerable weight,
while at the edge
one animal waited,
powerless before
the inertia
of the fall,
having seen
the others drop,
his hooves
clenching rock,
his shaggy coat
silhouetted against
white sky. On the sofa,
I lay listening
to a truck heave past,
and to the window-
panes rattle,
and to starlings
rearing up from a treetop,
swirling in the air
like script and then
descending again,
and to the mantel clock’s
kind, minimalist
Don’t be afraid.