to the other side of the bridge of atoms

of a second. Except for the air

breathing me, inside, then out. Suddenly,

I am still here.

Escaping must be like this

for the magician and mortal both—

like lungs and air. A trick

of bones and leaving any capture—a breath.

Everything is iron oxide or red this morning,

here in Sedona. The rocks, my love’s mouth,

even the chapel and its candles. Red.

I have been angry this week. Christian said,

Trust your anger. It is a demand for love.

Or it is red. Red is a thing

I can trust—a monster and her wings,

cattle grazing the sandstone hills like flames.

Caboose cars were once red,

and also the best parts of the trains—

the heat and shake of what promised to pass.

Finally, the red and the end of them.

Maybe this living is a balance of drunkenness

off nitrogen and the unbearable

atmosphere of memory.

From the right distance, I can hold anything

in my hand—the hawk riding a thermal,

the horizon which across many days might lead to

the sea, the red cliff, my love

glazed in fine red dust, your letter, even the train.

Each is devoured in its own envelope of air.

What we hold grows weight,

becomes enough or burden.

Cranes, Mafiosos, and a Polaroid Camera

I had a few days left of my stay at the crane sanctuary

in Kearney, Nebraska, when my brother called. It was 3:24 a.m.

It’s me, he said. It’s your brother. He had taken apart

another Polaroid camera and needed me to explain how

to put it back together. His voice was a snare drum, knocking

and quick. He was crying. I didn’t want to wake the other visitors,

and I knew he’d keep calling, hour after hour, day after day,

lifetime after miserable lifetime, until I answered. I slid out of bed.

Tell me what to do. You know what to do, he pleaded.

I should know how to help my brother by now. He and I

have had this exact conversation before—if I love him,

if I really love him, why haven’t I learned to reassemble

a Polaroid camera? Instead, I told him about the sandhill cranes,

the way they dance—moving into and giving way to one another,

bowing down, cresting and collapsing their wings,

necks and shoulders silver curls of smoky rhythm—

but he didn’t believe me. My brother believes the mafia

placed a transmitter deep within his Polaroid camera,

but he can’t believe in dancing cranes. You think this is a joke?

he whispers. These are fucking Mafiosos I’m talking about.

You’re probably next. He hung up on me.

That dawn, I aimed my digital camera at the sky

until the last of an island of late-rising cranes lifted into the metallic

air—I couldn’t take my eyes from the barrel of lens, my finger,

fast trigger against the black skeleton of the camera. I wondered

what it would look like cracked open to its upside-down mirrors