Flight from Amsterdam Stairway to Heaven beams through headphones,and I almost sing out, “I look to the west”but recall the ear-bud guy at the gym unawareof how loudly he crooned and out of tune.Sunset, synched with Led Zeppelin,brushes its pigments in time-lapse. As a kid, I hoped flying among sun-limned cloudswould be akin to sitting in a bubble bath.If the window opened, one could scoopmountainous handfuls, blow them, toss them up.But the plane entered gray nothingness,disappointing mist forming on glass. Now cabin lights dim: Clatter and murmurs stop.Joni Mitchell’s silk voice likens Amelia’s flightto the wax-melt disaster of Icarus.How the sea, trees, and geometric fieldsmust have grown in an astonished…

The Cemetery Is a Garden Things are grown here. You should know, you were planted back during the naming times. And even though we went the Degrassi route, I still remember pacing the rows and turning the stones over in my mouth. Are you a Samuel? An Asher? With every step you settle, skull grinding into my softened bones until the day I lie down atop a stranger’s grave and roar you earthside. I have no shame; I tell everyone it’s a family name. The stones are ancient. Sun-faded runes cast from a cup. It is divined that we will be alive here. There is a witch story of this…

Why I Live Near Water I need the stretch of horizonand sea winds that let me knowthe world is constantly in motion,that dust travels continentswith my lost hats. I am not immune to stormsand enormous waves crashing the coastor the sign that says Tsunami Zone.But I am not leaving. As the sea freed me, let it take me. I am comforted by boats in their slipsin the harbor, the pilings reflected in the water,the sailboats empty of sails,their slight rocking. I listen for the sea lion’s gruffnessas they haul out on to the docks,those adolescent, annoying barks,and the cormorant, its black lengthymissile of a body hurtling into the sky. The…

Birdwatchers I drove, dove really, into dawn, and down to the point where the old lake melts alongside the sea, and I stood in my straw hat under the pines in the parking lot while the guide explained ocular limitation: you will hear a thousand more birds than you will ever see. He cupped his ear, whispered parula. And we all looked up, to try to see the song, have the flick of common, invisible gold. When I closed my eyes to listen, to rise above my fellow humans, I heard morning traffic, a siren, another siren, fish crows, nah-ah, nah-ah, and the birders talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking…

Monday   Nearly monochrome –the sidewalks, the pavement,mute walls of emptyhouses, sky.Then a little after lunch timethe sun came out,instant and sudden,glorious.The world changed.Not very much –but two rabbitsemerged from beneaththe neighbor’s back deckto ring rosy aroundthe trunkof the cottonwood,to stop on a dimewith their elegant earsalert and their nosestwitching,to drop back quietlyinto their bodies,warm soft shadowsin the dun grass.     B. J. Buckley (she/her) has worked in Arts-in-Schools/Communities programs throughout the West for more than four decades. Recent work appears in Oakwood, About Place Journal, and the anthology Dawn Songs: A Birdwatcher’s Field Guide to the Poetics of Migration (Jamie K. Reaser and J. Drew Lanham, Eds.). Her…

Inconsequential   The garbage disposalhas a rubber bandcaught in its throat.The butter compartmentis etched with black mold.Spiders are building empiresin corners I can’t reach.When God set the worldin motion, did she understandwhat she was unleashing?I tell myself these problemsseem larger than they arebecause I am growing old.Yet, people older than merun entire countries.Are they also awareof filaments of inattentionsnaking through everything,leaving cracks to be colonizedby what we failed to notice,sabotaged by what wasinconsequential until it wasn’t. Spared   A branch falls before dawn.A power line snaps. Somewhereup the hill, a pole ignites, burns.By the time we wake, the fire trucks are gone.The culprit is a tree we have learned to…

Groundbreaking Cat Science Shows They Love to Sit in Illusory Boxes   Aunt Ruth is perplexedwe hear in the latest update from Manchesterthough she can get up and dress herself she is rather fed up with being shut inand as she is unstablein the sense of wobblythe carers don’t want to take her out You are wondering what happened to the cats. If you draw brackets,the corners on the floor,and wait, chances are good that when the cat wanders past,it will sit inside those brackets even if there are no connecting lines. You are wondering how Aunt Ruth isand whether the bills all over are paid or unpaid. Any other…

Thorax: this arrhythmia   Once a thing is done,it cannot be taken back. It sears. It smolders. Fate seals it.The gravest mistakes we make are when grief and fear lodgein the chambers of our hearts as if they are companionswarming themselves by the atrial fire and we are taken by surpriseby someone else’s hurt, that someone else can hang fireand our impulse to spark it. Blood rushes in through a pause and leavesfull of glint and wasted time. Angina is a strangling. The heart heals by scars.It’s an involuntary muscle, unthinking or unwilling or both.To live, then, is to admit having done the unforgivable,the heart only reconciled with life’s quivering…

Letter of Introduction   While the wet field drowns and rotsseeds, I am a daffodil bulb thrivingin the ditch, a completelife cycle stored underground. A desiccated leaf drapedand frozen on the post,I bare skeleton, remnantsof organs, soul. I praise the darkness of tree trucksthat strike down power linesas they pass through intersectionswith elbows raised too high. I offer double vision: shopliftedrecollections declared as my ownand my memories, haphazardlyevaporated, raked for crystal residues. I decipher the dust-free shadows revealedwhen heirlooms are knocked off the shelf.My green eyes, when closedand pressed, reveal nebula stars. Exhausted from scratchingthrough needle drop on the forest floor,I am a spotted towhee asleep in the darkjust before…

Mandarin at the Edge of a White Formica Table He serves green tea in terracotta cups.I don’t like green tea, but I pretend. On Wednesdays, after class,I walk with other studentsto the French professors’ apartment—one-bedroom, well lit,windows facing the university park. We talk about French cinema.Film d’auteur, he says. François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard,Jean Renoir, Alan Resnais. I want to be entangled with all these namesin the dome of his mouth.His lips are dry, parched.It’s the wind in this city, he says. I know by heart the marks of his upper front teethon his lower lip, like an engraving. Roger Vadim, Agnès Varda,Jean Cocteau, Éric Rohmer. I go to the bathroom…