How to Love the Natural Sciences
Jennifer Loyd
I’m eating fruit over the sink again,
so the summer houses must be empty.
Yesterday, the last veeries, our birds.
“Always make a note of where,” you said.
The fallow road between our houses.
One sounded out: veer-veer-veer,
“Or was it jeer?” I said.
Birds, chaff, you—south.
State line like a hemisphere.
You are foraging, forgetting
the wings which could return you.
Could you even handle me year-round?
“Listen. Coppery echo, tin soliloquy.”
Some somatic sweetness brushes past me
on its way down the hill.
I remember you handing me
back to myself. No
freckled chests, no cinnamon wings,
only the last of the wood-wasps.
“Trace your hand on a piece of paper,
and I’ll buy you a ruby ring,” someone said once.
My walk back—littered with fallen plums.
