I mistook a plastic bag
on the side of the desert
highway for a hawk—
thought it first alive
and gnawing its beak
into poor flesh, thought
it first an omen
for some end,
realized it then
an omen
for another—
its wing
of consumption
hovering its prey,
reading HOME
GOODS or DEPOT and
whipping at eighty-five,
realized intake
as I listened
to a podcast recapping
The Bachelorette
and watched the bag
in the rearview float up
and into the back
of a pick-up, become
another’s concern
and I still worry
for the items it once
carried because
in another
poem, the desert highway
and the bird are
metaphors for reality
television that haunt
the progress
of two lovers who
fight in an apartment
somewhere
in southern New Mexico
about the right
reasons of their
co-habitation, about
distance cramming
their style but how
they create it, how
we make all
the things we mourn
like the bag and the bird,
how I made the entire
thing up to say this,
about love
and how we fall
into it, out of it,
like plastic
bags from
speeding trucks.
