Lips Open Upside Down

morning’s maples wing

day light spring sky

shiny blackbird aloft

red of redbird, blue of bluebird

common names for things

a triangle might be greenbrier

tho I don’t know it

why is a name a noun?

beaver vs cuts-down-trees

ginkgo vs ruffed or splay

dolphins at the fishing pier

lips open upside down

swim by feeding

in my world placards would say

use any toilet you want

her lines say we & you

Aymaras look forward at the past

know the future approaches

from behind

Beatrice hunts a bee

catches & loses a marsh rat

I often lose names

every day I nap

I might, I need not

wake for another morning

Nothing Is Too Small Not to Be Wondered About

by Mary Oliver

The cricket doesn’t wonder

  if there’s a heaven

or, if there is, if there’s room for him.

It’s fall. Romance is over. Still, he sings.

If he can, he enters a house

  through the tiniest crack under the door.

Then the house grows colder.

He sings slower & slower.

  Then, nothing.

This must mean something. I don’t know what.

   But certainly it doesn’t mean

he hasn’t been an excellent cricket

  all his life.