All evening, each time I started to say it,
something would interrupt.
It was not a thought so very large–
it could in fact have slipped through any window
cracked open a bit for air.
Yet each time I started to say it, at that table,
someone else would speak, the moment would pass.
After the fifth time this happened, I began to be amused.
Runt-of-the-litter-thought, I thought, unable to get to the tit.
Then suddenly wanted to lift it up,
to feed it an eyedropper’s measure of mare’s milk,
some warmed sugar water, a little colostrum of badger.
It suddenly seemed to me the kind of thought,
not large, on which a life might turn.
There are many such: unheard, unspoken.
Their blind eyes open and close,
the almost audible valves of their hearts.
But all evening, each time I started to say it,
something would interrupt, the moment would pass.