Someone flips a lit match off the road 
near a cluster of cattails, takes 
another swig of beer, presses on the gas, 
the match is not specifically aimed 
at you: you just happen to be there —
at a Stop sign, in a parking lot, 
on a ferry, at a terminal; as a lens 
narrows sunlight to a point which blackens 
into flame, go ahead, zero in, try 
to x out a ball of jasmine sprig 
that unfurls in boiling water, x out 
a red-tailed hawk shifting on a cottonwood 
branch at dusk, x out coyotes yipping 
as they roam by new moonlight up the road, 
x out the dissolving suture threads 
in your mouth, x out a dog’s bark, 
a baby magpie fallen from a nest 
wandering on gravel, x out a flicker 
feather in the mud; you can’t x out 
diarrhea, x out a barn erupted into flames, 
x out firefighters lined up in trucks 
along Russian olives, x out the charred 
grass and stubs of fence posts, x out 
a pang, place of birth or time of death, 
x out, at an intersection of abscissa 
and ordinate, dark matter that warps 
space and time; you can’t x out a cloud, 
so make a lens of it the next time 
you chop cilantro at a counter, the next 
time you push through a turnstile.