i still believe in the poetry

in the garden, tomatoes

have split their skins

from growing too fast,

red wounds gaping

like mouths trying

to tell me something

about abundance,

about the violence

of becoming.

the cat brings me a cricket, still alive,

its legs moving in desperate semaphore.

i carry it outside

where it leaps once

into tall grass

that bends but doesn’t break,

that holds secrets

in its green,

folds like origami.

later, washing dishes,

i watch water spiral

and remember being seven,

convinced that somewhere

in australia, it spins

the other way.

i never did find out

if that was true,

but i still believe in the poetry

of opposite seasons,

of night becoming day

on the other side

of everything i know