You may wonder who will reach

down to perform the necessary miracle,

and when and what: the white bandage,

pristine; the laying on of hands; the soup

and sleep and bread and bed.

What righteous ancestor, guardian

angel, or late, love-beaming, riotous

animal companion; what dead men-

tor or living local leader-lender?

The smallest gesture you can muster,

the lowest whisper you can utter, the better.

We are easy to distress but harder to harm

or disarm. Blink once if you have survived

so far, yourself, you, that long-sought savior.

I am not cruel, only truthful—

The eye of a little god, four-cornered. -Sylvia Plath, “The Mirror”

 

From our beds at dawn, we glimpse the drones

seeming to swallow the sky: a white strobe light,

 

and on each wing, one winks reddish-pink,

the other green. We’re told there’s no law

 

against what we see smirk north to south, south

to north. Two cross paths as the third braids

 

in like a double-Dutch jump-roper.

We tell ourselves they have no soul

 

in this flight, as we proclaim the earth

is round and viruses make us sick;

 

the way we maintain that drones

and we alike are made of ancestral stars−

 

strange cousins taking photos                    at the reunion,

for proof                               or preservation.

I left my aspirations in the backseat of the taxi.

The driver said they weren't his monkeys.

At the cafe my cup said Juliet like a custom-

ized sedative or poison I gulped down as fate.

Outside, the wind flung agendas of others

in sudden gusts intent on toppling me over.

Yoga teaches that absolute stillness is impossible−

to stop is to move as to move is to stop.

Walking home I glimpsed the monkeys

of my dreams flying overhead like a cloud.

I supposed they might be off to roost

in their forever circus or some facsimile,

at least momentarily, until they find: the hill, the dog,

the fight, and the big fish fry, on, or for, which to die.