This poem is called "In the Grand
Scheme of Things," which is something I say all the time.
And then I realized, what grand scheme of things?
It sounds like someone wound up the wrens
and let them go, let them chatter
across your lawn like cheap toys.
And from here, an airplane seems to fly only
from one tree to another, barely chalking a line between them.
We say "the naked eye," as if the eye could be clothed,
as if it isn't the world that refuses to undress
unless we turn our backs.
It shows us what it chooses, nothing more,
and it's not waxing pastoral.
There is too much now at stake.
The skeletal rattle you hear at the window
could be only the hellion roses and the wind,
their thorns etching the glass.
But it could be bones.
The country we call ours isn't.
And it's full of them.
Every year you dig that goddamn rose bush from the bed,
spoon it from soil like a tumor.
And every year it grows back, thick and wild.
We say "in the grand scheme of things," as if there were one.
We say "that's not how the world works," as if the world works.