Round

Perhaps you covet something of

               its emptiness, its uselessness

in matters of  yearning or feeling

               another’s yearn, that it can’t

know a damn thing, yet damns

               everything it touches: the water

it gathers along its passage,

               the air it pushes through,

swallow-like. It is no bird,

               though you envy the song

you hear only after it’s gone,

               even if  it sings through paper,

a goat, the neck of a man

               wearing a scarf that tufts just as

the rest of   him flies out of

               his shoes and collapses in dirt.

Or, how it is like the dirt

               receiving him, the privilege

of not knowing if   he was

              kind or unkind, as you

chamber another, waiting for

              someone to come for his shoes.