Bird has died of fear in her cage

cuttle bone’s harried
her mate’s chattering at his mirror

bashing the bell
our child studies ants migrating for water

she pincers a lagger and licks him all up

follows the rest to their nest with a stick –

it is her nature
they all die so easy

not like us
I’m reading my guts coiled in the usual

usual shapes but casting

a differing inference

and ask
People like us who read things into things,

Who really knows? What the hell? 
You’re drinking in the kitchen,

the whites of your eyes roll back

like rearing stallions. 
I want to know whose butts are in the yard

seeing we don’t smoke anymore?

Whose butts? 
They are burning leaves again, you say.

It’s a kind of meditation

inviting fire or keeping it away

getting rid of the rubbish

is an occupation

for these ends of days –

Dig a hole, I say.
The oil stain in the drive has Rorschach wings.

I scry the bathwater we kept for the plants.

The dog laps at it and growls,

I pull out the plug.
I can read the signs but can’t do anything

about them. The past is here and the future, so

I read the toilet bowl and the dirty

hand basin and the drips from the tap

are very telling

I don’t even need

to really see or listen

as the evidence is here.

Then I flush it away.
An ant holds a bead of water,

his mandibles quiver.
The dog is frothing with snail killer,

next door’s cat shat

in the kid’s sand pit.
The washing stinks— smalls, colours, whites,

delicates soaking, old blood

stains set.
It’s getting hotter and we talk about rain

as if it is the only topic, rain or flood.

What we’d do if we got washed away.
How long we could hold our breath

what we’d grab on to.