In the garden, a dark-eyed junco
hops on the moss path, turns
its neck, flits up to a high birch
branch. I turn my neck to see bird,
bleeding heart flowers, ninebark
buds. We, junco and I, came
through the same door of time,
our ancestor a fish that struggled
onto land, a fish who had a neck,
whose neck could turn. Across town,
bad news: more lives destroyed.
Whatever we fear has already happened—
a line from Tishani Doshi’s poem
of egrets and war and bones. I sit
with mysteries washed up by time,
our own neck bones. I want to live
to witness the Andromeda galaxy—
racing our way at 70 miles per
second—marry the Milky Way,
how night will turn hazy bright.
But in four billion years our neck-
turnings, bones, worries, wars
will be sun-scorched, obliterated.
Here, now, in this nanosecond
of eternity, a black-hooded bird
flutters among green May leaves.