Bracken

it would be easier to kill something / less separate from myself / my body now a temple of scarred wood / ribs sharp like a windowless room / spine bowed from the pain of bringing another smaller room into the world / underneath a salt-colored sky / sun swinging like a metronome / these days scraping down to nothing / shedding silt along their edges like riverbeds / & despite all of this i have been told that the best time to hunt deer is early morning or dusk / mist unfurling over the grass / does picking their way through juniper / wild plum / generous elderberry / all the children of the flowers my mother grew for her children / before she turned to wax in the hospital / her body choked by cement and marble & not returned to earth with the viburnums / the spicebush / the soil swollen with root like a belly / love always a resigned counting down / but deer have no concept of numbers / of time / they escape this eventuality / & i can’t believe i used to shoot them at the moment they looked most beautiful / eggshell cathedrals / rooms with smaller rooms inside them / half-hidden by bracken / already drifting away over the dogwood / already turning to ghosts