print previewback TALVIKKI ANSEL
Somewhere in Space
[After I . . . ]
After I dumped the failed jelly by the rotten
herring I felt better
some things you cannot save, and they were
feral, the cats who appeared over the wall, like smoke
slid into the underbrush of dark jewelweed
and viburnums by the stream, though I tried
to watch their night movements,
tried to know their lives,
one solitary in snow, footprints
over the woodpile, under the back steps
down the path to the chicken coop.One, clownlike Ripple on the grape arbor
chased dry leaves, wind tracing the yard,
and didn’t the orioles wing down
to eat the jelly, and some night wanderer
leave a neat hole
where the herring was buried.