Nonetheless, I consider the Language of Windfall
natalie rice
by
I watch the snow come and go—unsure
of the difference between absent
and returning. The body is always
both at once, as is the cottonwood.
In its back—a hollow
snag I hadn’t noticed
until you pointed to it. The physics
of desire requires a falling body.
At my feet, is the peeled skin
of some small, wild dog. Silver twitched
and marbled, my instinct is to look up.
Buddhists would say
that underneath our ordinary lives,
there is a fundamental groundlessness—
what’s more true:
the juncos skirting waxberries
lacelike an inch above the earth, or
my malleable soul hovering
just above my head? Last windstorm,
a cottonwood
shattered the driveway. I saw it
quick and glinting. One owl rose—backwards
and then forwards—nothingness
is windswept and unclutched. In that darkness,
I let myself in.