Secret Life With Squirrel

Erin Lambert

1.

Everywhere

I feel my soul’s fractures: eyeless 
bird in gutter, small boy dragged through shop
by collar, blown lights down lifeless street.

But I can never be King
of Pain, so I recite daily: “You, whom I could not save,
listen to me,” until I hear
that entire poem move through my mind
thoughtless.

Some days I have recalled while walking: “it matters
that autumn is grafted into autumn
it matters that autumn is”

I felt such words would cloak my misery
from this shared one which surrounds me
that I wanted to keep those two apart
lest they mate. Still, I wondered: Why not
paint all ceilings the underside of leaf?
That dull pea that stains the light of liars?

We have all been made to stare at floors
with the persistent gaze of canisters sealed in cellar.

2. 

Though walls will always turn on me,

though I am not two boys with green batons
beneath this tree’s secret life with squirrel,

though I watched in thrift shop the cartoon villain
say, “We must find a way to make Underdog
forget who he is!”

I see myself

in hope, the blanch parts of carnelian,
this spire on a vine without leaf,
in all things I wish I had to give
and in everything that I have ever failed to keep.

Even this tumbled hematite mirrors me
as it does you, whom I will never save,
and you, who will never know.

“You, whom I could not save, listen to me.” from Dedication by Czeslaw Milosz.

“It matters that autumn is grafted into autumns” from Hat, Coat, Gloves by Cesar Vallejo. (My use of autumn in the singular is intentional.)