Poem for the Day

From Linda Gregg's In the Middle Distance.

As Is

Pay attention, talk to no one unless
you are buying food or borrowing a book.
Or asking for directions to the border,
or the canyon, or the river with a pool.
Always formal. Poor with poor.
It's not the same here. No Greek ruins.
No fragment with legs of walking horses
painted delicately on it. No part
of a lion on bits of a glazed vase.
Like a code to tell of how the world they knew
would be destroyed. Here there is no need.
The rabbit's groin is ripped open
on the road. When you find a bird's wing
there is a flattened small bird attached.
A ranch at evening, the sun leaving,
antelope standing and the other birds
flying. All of it meaning the same thing.