Equivalence
How heartbreaking to find irises tilting
to full bloom in one direction
as if waiting for someone to come
down their path are one symptom
of light’s partiality. A heart breaks,
dawns. This is a figure, of course,
of speech. The body, mine or yours, never
ours whatever anyone believes—what more
to it. For anyone’s more it
than anything. This steel, steel. This cherry,
cherry. This glass, glass. Even as violets are violet
in a thousand other ways, your grief is one shade
when you’re in grief, yours. It’s one
when you’re not, human. Else only in nuance.
Light caught
by surprise
in my fully
empty—fully
emptied—glass.
Deer-looted garden. Irises wax to hope
before locking on an image. Wane to knowledge.
We’re each alive in broad impartial light.
Each human and misunderstanding shovels.
