The Nature of Things

A robin redbreast pecked in the gravel by the front steps. I stood inside the door watching it peck one particular spot with strange insistence. The robin sensed me watching and froze. We were connected for a split-second in the only possible way our separate natures allowed. And then the robin flew off as though determined to search further for what can't be found.

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What I thought was a long, black stick lying on the path to the beach—or, no, the inner tube of a bicycle tire—wasn't, and the instant I realized that, I yelped and stepped back and looked frantically for something I could use to kill it, crush its skull, and in the meantime, the snake slipped into the beach grass, just vanished, and I stood there and knew which of us was innocent and which cold-blooded and venomous.

&

You believe the trees will grow back and the leaves will grow back on the trees. "Make that leap with me," you gently plead. How can I when my eyes rattle like dice in a cup? I am dead and looking for my grave. I am looking in the streets Kafka used to walk. My bones click with each step. Listen! Please! I have nothing to say and I am saying it.

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Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of The Loser's Guide to Street Fighting, winner of the 2017 Lorien Prize from Thoughtcrime Press, and Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry.