David Fuqua

Near the Edge of Town

Spider eats bug, chicken eats spider,
coyote kills chicken.  Every day
ten thousand things die around you.
Starlings congress in the trees, settling
their disputes by the hundreds, tens, and ones,
bleeding every second from the day.
In May, it’s eggs and babies, in August
a bullfrog at noon sounds like a hammer
in the distance.  Your days aren’t beads
strung on your intentions then closed
by a clasp of gold.  December exposes
the spine of things when the woods
sit still as a crane.  Down the spring rains rain;
longer days coax daffodils from the chilly soil.
You know death so imagine immortality.
A late freeze decimates dirtdobbers;
black widows thrive.  You fill a place
that will one day be empty.  Wind, water,
not your prays, move the earth.  Deep sorrow
yields an optative mood; the something
you can’t express flits round your head
like tiny sulphurs making four generations
in a season on the plants you’ve laid out.