I’ll eye and mouth and handle this world
whole, demand of the rocking chair arms
and demand again of the clementine’s

supple give. I’m out on the lake with those
two women sculling deathlessly through
the afternoon. I’m inside my phone

smoothing out my brain function: absence
blanketing the sunflower fields on both sides
of my eyes. Concern is local, small, against

the senses that thrive on distance: the passive
ear’s soft cupping of sound, the solar flare’s
long elbows into memory, the belated defense

of the stinkbug that counts on me having
killed its kind before. The A/C’s easy static
balances the sky. My shadow starts at my feet

or ends at them. I am the squirrel unarmed
on my porch. My eyes roll like I’m a breaking
horse. An afterthought of breeze pats me down.