for Stephen
What Durer called eternal
line I call your
back, bent
to work the post
into the ground:
the earth resists
our labor, our
intrusion. We
only want
to make a little
space for
gifting
some
of what we’ve
brought with us.
Oiler seed, safflower,
mustard-colored millet.
Everything
that grows must also
feed something else.
Now we find
ourselves downsized,
made redundant,
two bedrooms,
ground floor. Window
looking out onto the patch
of grass
that does not belong
to either one of us—
we preserve it for the sparrows,
pests, people
call them,
the mourning
doves that are only
pigeons but for
how
they trill.
Day after day, season
after season, let them
return here to be
fed, if no one else
will have them. As you
and I will
always
feed one another.