AND / OR

was foraging outside a patch of burning birds,

papering and evaporated blue over a thin field

and caught myself inside a nest like an eroded
cliff
or the strutted gap between vent and vented,
formally

and humming or I was the wing and circle saw
full of hungry throats or bound to them and
fleeing

or trees pierced into a scatter of trajectory, or cars
torched and chiming, and/or you were there:

carrier cloud, you empty along the bottled
breakers, or
you the jealousy harp, you the scenting dog,
and

you the lakeward, the forget.
you the clapper of each bell.

by Hillary Gravendyk

published in Octopus 10