WEBVTT

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"Dear Mr. Director of the Census
Bureau, yesterday hundreds

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of broad wing Hawks moved in
kettles over Eastern Travis

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County, dropping shadows on
scaly pines and glass fault

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drives, power lines
and watering holes,

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sailing in currents of rise and
fall, heavenly, purgatorial.

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This morning, at the
Spider House Cafe,

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a manager strings white lights
through rungs of Jasmine.

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At a table near
mine, a girl sits

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with her mother and boyfriend.

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The girl pulls handfuls of
bread from a plastic bag.

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'Tell us the story of the night
she was born,' the boy asks.

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A cement mixer grinds
across the street.

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On a sidewalk, a woman struggles
with a sack of laundry.

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'I was playing Risk,' the
girl's mother explains,

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'and they were letting me win.'

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Dante described the
universe as a series

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of spheres and heavens--

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sphere of air and fire,
heaven of moon and Venus,

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heaven of fixed stars,
angelic circles,

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the rows of the blessed.

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My mother hung curtains on
the morning of my birth.

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My father untangled
strands of tinsel.

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Capricorn ascended.

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I could chart all the
satellites danging

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like a mobile above my nursery.

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Hawks alight on a
high voltage tower

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by the highway, each scrub oak
below them opens like a flower,

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each city block unfolds like
a square on a game board.

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This morning, I can see
the staggering boundaries

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of power grids and aquifers.

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But sir, they tell me nothing.

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Sphere of the chain link fence
around a daycare center, heaven

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of police cars pulling up to
the curb, heaven of winter

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treetops barren and brittle.

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Rows of the boy in a paper hat
running towards the crosswalk.

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