Poem - THERE DOESN'T NEED TO BE A POEM - Tess Taylor

for sadness. Simply to breathe
next to a stream that slips to the gutter
near your house

would be enough. To see,
next door, in the graveyard,
the brown-and-yellow millipede

bury itself below one granite stone,
joining in the work of making soil,
just as now the faithful oxygen

still turns the copper headstone green,
oxidizing to patina despite all.
By luck, your own feathered alveoli

still redden your blood, your fine cell walls
trade oxygen for carbon,
and sift the windy mix we call the air:

This happens, going on invisibly,
even if no one remembers how
& even if it seems that pain

is a volatile molecule, grief
bonding unpredictably to things.
Now the late sun rims a cloud.

You, who watch that cloud:
Inhale. Exhale.