She learned the meaning of industry
From Sunday school sermons on
Protestant virtue,
the third little pig,
the spider not the fly,
and the squirrel putting up supplies
for the barren season–

Conceived under a whore’s moon, no doors
on our seventh house, we wear our bodies uneasily
as if our skins shrunk in the drying cycle,
walk both sides of yellow lines
or sit at the edges of chairs, one tooth loose,
the new one pushing close behind.

Incision to be scheduled in bull’s-eye red.
Enchanted scalpels side-by-side,
line up to make the cut un-kind.
They come to fetch (clip-clop) in step.

He sits beside his wife who takes the wheel.
Clutching coupons, he wanders the aisles
of Stop & Save. There’s no place he must be,
no clock to punch. Sure,
there are bass in the lake, a balsa model
in the garage, the par-three back nine.
But it’s not the same.
Time the enemy then, the enemy now.

Once more, in their dumb unknowing,
sandhill cranes are pulled to a place
they must again and again get back to.