puzzle inside you. From the center of the web,

a smaller spider started walking

down in my direction—then leaped toward me,

from the inner surface of the pane. With the scooping

motion of a night-blooming flower closing,

I got it in a handkerchief

and took it to the porch, and it belayed down

into the garden. The flowers on the hanky were in

full, imaginary bloom, and the garden

still dust and ash, dried leaf and dirt

flecked with quartz in the sun—like constel-

lations, guarded by the dog star, shining

up from inside the ground.

All of a Sudden, I See, and My Heart Sinks

When the downy perches

lengthwise along the broomstick

the suet feeder is hanging from,

I suddenly understand they are

my favorites—the downies and hairies and chickadees,

and the spider smaller than a droplet of water in the

lifted-up ground of the woodsflower nosegay—my

familiars, they are what a child might have

for imaginary family.

I feel struck down with the truth of it.

They are my kin, the minuscule songbirds,

and the golden-greenish woodpeckers,

the heron walking her counterclockwise

oval down inside the bank of the pond,

pulling her long, black toes

back, and up, slowly, through the

murk of late summer. I am at home

with them, as if I’d chosen them

as my deepest cohort—as if my mother,

when she beat on me, had driven me

away from the human, toward the avian,

given me to them as Jesus gave John

to Mary. And therefore I don’t really live

alone but with the wing ones and the six-legs,

and the eight-legs—and the mammals with dark

claws at the bends of their wings—I want to cry

out, “I have

real children,”

but I spend more time, now, with the flying

reptiles and the lepidopts and the

arachnid falling like a green tear through the

late summer wild Mother’s Day bouquet.

What I Look Like

When I was a small child, I thought I was

not very visible—

when I danced with a flower, I was mirroring it,

blossom face, leaves arms,

stem torso, roots legs

and toes. I would cavort and curvet

and twirl-cajole around my mother’s

garden, to honor the finger-length entirely

invisible faeries. I wore dresses, and hand-me-down

cardigans of my sister’s, the gaps between

the buttoned buttons were pointed ovals

in which the smocked floral pattern of the

dress twisted. But the older I got,

and the more my mother turned me half

upside down to slash at me

for her pleasure, the more troubled my face got—

a shocked look, bleak and ashamed,

sullen, sollein, alone.

By the time I was 12, I thought I looked

like a monster—demonstrating my soul’s

warp. But when I was 15, boys suddenly

liked me—I loved that,

I knew it was for my body, and despite

my face. But when I turned 70,

I began to think I was pretty, for an older

woman. Not criminally pretty, like

my mom, with those turquoise-blue, faceted