Migration

Even frozen against that tree in the cemetery,
the gray squirrel is big as a cat and could be sleeping,
though who has seen a squirrel at rest? What eye has torn
apart those clots of sprigs they build for children? Maybe the crow
that waits nearby to feed, black in death and mourning.
A quick bobble, an eye toward the body—it hardly moves.

Frost melts in slow motion. Patience is for the broken legged
and hungry. The sun, at least, rises, yellow on fur and tombstones:
Walter and Renninger, Johnson Johnson Johnson.
And the dead leaves of fall, also small and crumbling,
soften everything about this season. Autumn, Migration, Hair—
light brown on the legs of a girl named Naomi. She has written stories
about that squirrel. She has asked what is the reality of your body,
which doesn’t mean anything, which is now inertia.

Like an engine starting,
a torch ignited, the day is alive and passing the graves.
At last the crow hops closer to the carrion. A block away
Canada Geese still linger on one of the more secluded lawns.
Instinct is inscribed like the law of God. Fly.
They brood on the grass, but almost audible is the expectation
for warmth. Something takes them there.
Someone could loop a blinking necklace to each one
and write down where they land.