Click here to listen to Ralph Sneeden read this poem.
We are not out of the woods, maybe in the wrong neck, like birds intending stasis
who weave their clot of straw
in the grill beside the headlight.
When we watch the dog watch
the bee’s hungry circum-
navigation of the apple
fallen to the fading
lawn, that burrowing amuses
us, as if the excavation
of imploded rot were somehow
lit mud room and rusty nail,
its retired blue collar,
bangles of expired vaccinations.
