I want to write a poem
that will embody in you something
alien. A crow, for instance,
clutching the branch of a dead oak
in a dry riverbed five miles outside
of Hollister. A sleek, sharp bird,
eyeing the heap of bones that was once a cow.
I would have you in that tree all day,
with the sun in its long, slow arc
turning the fields into flames of weeds,
seedpods cracking in the heat,
the chattering sparrows nervous
under your gaze. I want you
to observe in the distance a man
stalking through milkweed and thistle.
He’ll stop a hundred feet away, wipe
his brow with a sleeve, and swing the rifle
to his shoulder. I want you to look
into that barrel a long time, before
the quick sunburst and shattering
of branches, as you wing from the limb,
and fly, cawing and cursing, over the sprawling,
logical suburbs.