SIMPLE, RIDICULOUS

There is such action here the yard we can’t decide

is front or back a black fly chasing my breath

Courtney tentative on the harmonica The leaves dip and twist

frantically modern though their shadows show them up

The bees are out-buzzed by the hummingbirds

at the feeder, where ants go steadily to be drowned, now

Courtney reads The Known World as wrens fill in

and neither of us feels the least bit ironic about it

We live amidst the machines of our thought, a geometry

of sleeplessness forged by quiet, unnamed desires

I pay my ear to the simple, ridiculous happinesses

a plane blanketing the air, a bee scissoring through, aghast

at the plural these interloping ghosts overlapping

truth in the unique startle at the jackhammer’s

bony knock, a woodpecker (I swear) looking on, or

it is just as well nowhere, wanting the things to thing

for us, wanting to see so as only to settle into a blinding