Shrugged

  by Nadine Lockhart


The tentative you
coming forward
like dark wood, 
hands pocketed.

The Buddhist resists: 
for example, when 
you said when I said 
I loved you I didn’t 
mean it—that way 
yet you couldn’t toss out 
the leather couch from 
that Tibetan teacher.

Which was next
between lesser gods—you nod 
& bleed as anyone else, I think 
I saw you there. Boxed in, 
black square.     
           Writing, writing . . .
before the vegan shift,
long lectures on need
& protein, was it?

I wake with the spinach,   
whipped lemon tea & ruby
pomegranate seeds—wild 
beasts sing about this: 
a Steller’s Jay puffs up
fat in the cold morning 
& calls chuh-chuh-chuh.