Walking the Dog
It’s only a red light / a regular red stoplight / it doesn’t mean what it used to / the crawl across my back? a nerve somewhere sending its regards / from the headlands to the stern there’s a storm inside / and I resent my students who say what they think I want to hear /and I want to tell them don’t you know I’m younger than you / I keep not knowing anything / I want them to know that nothing too /the sparrow worries I’m after its nest when I’m just walking past /please treat the place like you live here / don’t throw chicken bones and nips / birthday cake candles in my garden / isn’t this world also yours / we broke it we own it / a redbud is a redbud even if it never blooms—I need that / and there isn’t a dog in the world except for my Dover at the end of her leash /and I know the car has no intention none whatsoever to stop at the red light / so we wait / wait at the curb / nothing means what I was told
The Screen
My plane waits for me at the end of a tunnel,
its engines brum, knock of bridled explosions,
fumes, squirts of oil and grease, heads slicked,
free of grit, the metal skin mirrors the sunrise
My coming journey will pummel its steel,
test its jets— what can be dissected
and put together again
What gets larger through collective
experience is made of individual noticings
My student described the white bowl
in the museum and discovered
the orbit of earth, its imperfect round,
the moon with its pitted surface,
and what could I do, but thank her?
When the wonder opened,
I mean, the window, I was somewhere
again finally, my body had an earth
for a whole breath
in a blue sky,
but the passenger beside me closed it,
the sunlight streaming in
obscures his screen,
everyone but me returns
to their movies, curated movement
of a narrative so unlike
life that spends itself heedlessly,
the little seconds whizzing away here and there,
who’s to say this led to that?
What is text, but probability,
the odds of one word
following another
and the predictable world
goes unfilmed, it’s full of the sleeping
and who wants to watch it?
The brain loves motion and will make a story
Let me say this:
I love to see the shadow of my jet
race across winter trees
Catch me! it says
Catch me if you can!
Spun-Butter Light Smothers The Rust-Tipped Weeds
Dusk
clotted with insects
sipping the last
bit of august
dancers
on the palm
of summer
tulle skirts
net light
little leap
of a season
tipping
into September
and from the underwelt
the click and twirl
of cicadas unwinding
dervishes
of the emptying
Mary Buchinger is the author of seven collections of poetry including Navigating the Reach (Salmon Poetry, 2023, Mass Book Award, honors, ) and The Book of Shores (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2024).