High above the aspen’s filtered gold
twin contrails curve into the blue south
like comets in love, maybe Orpheus
and Eurydice, because we have to start
somewhere, fashion a prime meridian,
lay hands upon the world, twin the sun
and moon, Apollo, Artemis, and when
the gods have failed, Lewis’s woodpecker,
Clark’s nuthatch, my feeder swarmed by
lesser goldfinch – do they feel it so? –
though we cannot help ourselves – each day
in the garden, naming, naming as if words
are ever enough, as if when the circus has
passed, some hand will take from me a rib,
and yet, sun low in the west, there you are.
