once I wore gloves for any important occasion/ hand-embroidered
knitted in white cotton jersey brushed to a sueded handle &
a garden party meant peonies & pears & green bean casserole & once
long ago I read that an elephant recognized herself as herself in a mirror
– remarkable – & once hungry in the south of France I took food
I didn’t pay for from a grocery store/ caught & let off & not long
after that I snorted so much Peruvian flake I couldn’t sleep but finally

I let go of that too once there was any kind of beautiful
decoration in a shithole with antimacassars on the backs of every
broken chair & I watched a bird dive for small fish & other scrumptious
vertebrates– time & time again – from a distance
in the coldest weather on an open gain in a state of many lakes
– & I thought: insistence & dependence & yearning human traits
animals never know & once on the road to genetic memory
a little boy tumbled from a train heading west/ lost on the prairie
his parents – whose English amounts to please & thank you &
how much – beg back up the train five miles & find him sitting at the same
spot where he fell & one day his son carries a small hardened
potato in his front pants pocket claims it pulls his pain to itself
& more than once I’ll remember when my pain is the same pain is hard

hard hard once in yesterdays I thought of objects/ things/ keepsakes
& a farmer’s hands come by honest & a quarter section of land
& a single belted kingfisher – perched prominent/ close to water – plunging
in headfirst or burrowed in horizontal earthen excavation in a riverbank’s
uphill slope – hatchlings survive when the floods come high
in a nest at the end of a tunnel – once & this was long ago I thought
to linger in the north even in the coldest winters imaginable
as long as there were any remaining open bodies of water close
to home or maybe migrant/ aiming at fearlessness instead
I’d make a paradigm shift & ask if you really mind – our fishes meet
the ice chest with a slap – being alone up here/ no more neighbors
no shops & no one’s left once when I was young & this was long
long ago in a bar in Rheims I watched workmen down shots
of apple brandy – it was 6:30 in the morning – & I thought about
happiness & the first bird to fly from Noah's ark after the deluge
promising peace prosperity & love & now I think of hungering
& my first glass of wine at 9AM & the Grand Casino at Mille
Lacs & playing the slots pulling pulling & the crippling
that makes of me an image of any animal’s hopefulness

Mara Adamitz Scrupe

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