Minnows Wear Swift

muzzles of flies along the beach. Pines comb
a mild wind, weather sewing
bizarre shapes out over the water.
Transient. Variable even as natural law
reins wave after wave closer.

The scar below the base of my skull
is impersonal, the splice of it.

No more than a mile back, the peppery moth
mired in web. How it seemed to live
in that collision.

Suffering is a mappable thing— a system

within a system within another system.
And without warning the wilderness

lays it on the line: You are taking up space.
Suddenly I am aware
of my own radius, like a bomb. I listen.
Acres of indictment. A presence so raw
nothing my hands can do will soothe.