in my room there are four praying
mantises, two tarantulas, one puppy,
        two people

        matter is neither created nor
destroyed, but some things are small enough
        not to exist until culminated

        sex flicked off tables,
fingernail plate armor, dust bunnies,
        the occasional bird

        squirrels who gnaw 
the owl box
         back into the trunk

        the tree that fell so we
could stand before it, thinking
       through tunnels

        addressing dead starlings,
the consecutive order of ants,
        whether or not

        we should have seen it coming
upright decay on which
        we strung lights

        instead we watched it going
wilting & sopping
        still holding up dinner

        for us, as much as anything
to get drunk & watch come
        creatures returning with tape

        inseparable to the earth
as if nothing could be greater
        than to be put in its misery