Last night the mouse cleaned my kitchen traps.
Now it stands somewhere nearby, swaying 
like a drunken grad student.
 
From the deck, gripping their wand-like stems, 
I shake peony petals down into the garden, 
creating a crime scene that involves a bird. 

It must have been a large bird, Gentlemen—
cream-colored. 
So be it: 

a garden was the scene 
of the original crime: 
victim framed as perpetrator. 

No matter how shoddy the plot
of The da Vinci Code, there is something fishy 
about female experience in Christianity. 

In adolescence, mulling the male-freighted shape 
of the Trinity, finally I drew the line  
at Christianity. 

It sank into the dustbin 
of my history. 
But during that long night 

of deciding, I had time to consume some 
of its delicious rhythms, some lovely cadences separable 
from the metal of its rack.