Magpies Recognize Themselves in the Mirror

The night sounds like a murder

of magpies and we’re replacing our cabinet knobs

because we can’t change the world, but we can

change our hardware. America breaks my heart

some days, and some days it breaks itself in two.

I watched a woman have a breakdown in the mall

today and when the security guard tried to help her

what I could see was all of us

peeking from her purse as she threw it

across the floor into Forever 21. And yes,

the walls felt like another way to hold us in

and when she finally stopped crying,

I heard her say to the fluorescent lighting, Some days

the sky is too bright. And like that we were her

flock in our black coats and white sweaters,

some of us reaching our wings to her

and some of us flying away.

Love Waltz with Fireworks

Seventeen minutes ago, I was in love

     with the cashier and a cinnamon pull-apart,

     seven minutes before that, it was a gray- 

haired man in argyle socks, a woman

     dancing outside the bakery holding

     a cigarette and broken umbrella. The rain,

I’ve fallen in love with it many times,

     the fog, the frost—how it covers the clovers

     —and by clovers I mean lovers.

And now I’m thinking how much I want to rush up

     to the stranger in the plaid wool hat

     and tell him how much I love his eyes,

all those fireworks, every seventeen minutes, exploding

     in my head—you the baker, you the novelist,

     you the reader, you the homeless man on the corner

with the strong hands—I’ve thought about you. But

     in this world we’ve been taught too keep

     our emotions tight, a rubberband ball we worry

if one band loosens, the others will begin shooting off

     in so many directions. So we quiet.

     I quiet. I eat my cinnamon bread

in the bakery watching the old man still sitting

     at his table, moving his napkin as he drinks

     his small cup of coffee, and I never say,

I think you’re beautiful, except in my head,

     except I decide I can’t

     live this way, and walk over to him and

place my hand on his shoulder, lean in close

     and whisper, I love your argyle socks,

     and he grabs my hand,

the way a memory holds tight in the smallest

     corner. He smiles and says,

     I always hope someone will notice.

What I Call Erosion

Today’s sea seems tired of stealing

acres of sand from the beach.

What I call erosion, the waves call:

I wish the wind would stop rushing us,

I wish we could just take it slow.

In the beauty of whitecaps, I sometimes

see sadness, sometimes how lucky we are

to watch the sunrise one more time.

There’s so much we’re carrying these days—

the seabirds drop another clam shell on shore,

the killdeer runs across the dunes

trying to distract everyone from its nest.

Danger, even when its not, is everywhere.

Sometimes I pretend to have a broken wing

as I look out my window. But then a cloudscape

in a world of buffleheads, of saltwater roses,

and I forget fear. It’s 7 a.m. on a Thursday

and an otter is pretending none of my concerns

matter. The otter, a sort of mad hatter,

is diving in and out of the waves, playful.

When the planet says, This is impossible,

the otter responds, Only if you believe it.