Why seize mid-morning for desk work. Winter lingering
the window streaky with ammonia
dissolving in salt slag at the hocks of Equuleus.

Touching night's soft muzzle, the story opens out celestial
all bitterness translated. In some woods I know
neon fungi light up brush that does not burn.

Against actuarial tables for Earth
astrobiologists plant ferns in a round vivarium
to feed against grow lamps. They thrive beneath the same blue light
though other moons may grace them fantastic shapes.

That first, indifferent horse trotting straw-mouthed along the edge
what enormous teeth through bracken and elsewhere.
Holding on was new like a proverb still unwritten.

I was trying to straighten the spine my mother gave me
from her own bent side. This, the original—

a stingy field indicating where the brass orb would aim
on a distant day. Each whipped weed's glossolalia frantically
demanding a verb, all these words a fistful of fodder.
Mark the hopeful angle, the magnifying glass of sun.