the ecosystem that young children
wake up on Tuesdays
before dawn to try & save
treading muddy gray roadsides
spiriting away cigarette butts
faded azure beer cans
thin shopping bag ghosts
with tiny gloved hands—
this cracking frost-heave
pavement landscape
is my body

my body is the first gasping crocus
the first chanting insects,
the first murdered fieldmouse
after waking

is the first meal
of a young owl,
all fluff and down and bone,
high in a skinny birch tree
and still a-feared of foxes

my body is hot loam
is fevered asphalt
is a feeding garden
& my soul…

my soul
is the beating sun,
undecayed, though tarnished
by weeks
maybe months
behind curtains of Winter

my soul separate
from my body
for so long…
and yet

it could have dined with God
and married His Daughter
before anyone thought to go looking