The ant grips low in the breeze.
Like the morning glory, it knows
this is our last day on earth
but that’s okay, so was yesterday.
And tomorrow? Ask the mulberry
mangling in the stretched wire fence.
Ask the weather. By evening, we don’t know
which fear will triumph, of being alone
or loved. It’s complicated, says the bee,
I can’t make it any clearer than this dance.
The last months the mother knows no one,
her body becoming hollow as a wren’s.
His last, the father sounds caught
in a net. We can ask him anything
and he’ll answer, taking a long time
forming the words with a tongue turned to clay
but we don’t. Was it jubilation
that made him buy the three-piece yellow suit
he’d wear just twice? Every three steps
he was out of breath, another floating
leaf avoiding the grate as long as possible.
Now things are going wrong inside us:
heart, stomach, throat. We sleep
better in a chair, entertained
by additions to the 7,000
hours of music we’ll never hear again
and cicadas whirring from shells
of smaller selves the cat loves
to chase and crush.