For example: the frogs
find a dinner plate, and an acorn
makes funny gestures from beneath the dirt.
And the string twangs, as was expected.

How simple, how unlikely to happen to us.
Only a misplaced vector connects
the pine tree’s yowl to the sandbox,
which, if you don’t think about it, is alright.

I get confused so many times
before I stop and train my thoughts.
And again: the sound I hear
is either walnuts cracking or red birds

splashing into windows. But
the movements have been extinguished
and the two are so dissimilar they may as well
be the same. Or watermelons

stomping insects underfoot. In
the other room of this house is a man
walloping a rooster with a broom,
but the rooster is too scared

to tell him just how effective
positive thinking is, just as oceans
are too murky to provide freethinkers
with a useful metaphor.

Of course not, said a man
lifting his cat from pool. But then
it was too late, and something
was pulling whimpers through the air.