What is Given

All things being equal, I’d say the world

was most interested in its own piracy,

engaged in constant erasure. The February snow

a kind of performance art involving light

and weight dispersal, the wind hastening behind

like paparazzi in a celestial cover-up. The earth

immured, retracting. A neighborhood dog kennels

its muzzle in a dead tire, scavenging for warmth.

If death is natural, as we believe, then the death

of the world is natural. Nature’s mistake was creating

its own weaknesses, and all things are made in the likeness

of that divorce. The red truck sliding through a stoplight

near Governor Ave is a form of subtraction, the twin bars

of an equals sign narrated by tire tracks. It jumps the curb,

careening headlong through a chickenwire fence.

When the driver gets out, he is shaken. He cannot

articulate. This narrative should have ended in death.

The world retracts. Between conscious moments lies

these moments of stilled belief, of inquisitive imminence.

There in the snow the driver looks awkward, looks

skyward, looks down. He discovers only himself,

but that is a given.