I’m afraid of what’s beyond the dishes
we wash in retrieved lake water. The knowledge
that pines keep private. The sap you hide

in urns over skin is the world I seek.
The way it knows itself.
The way it sustains despite the unsustainable.

I tell you of the hummingbirds enslaved
people in an enslaved country kept in cages.
Outside they dart from feeder to feeder.

They protect the feeders they claim.
Intruders are pierced       chased            left to die alone
as chairs without people rock on the porch.

All of the clean dishes could
fall       pieces on the pine floor.
I’m looking at the paper hummingbirds

stuck to the spice shelf. They are
blue     creased       strange beneath
coriander       cardamom       cumin.

The girl who made them is now a woman
afraid of hummingbirds: their blueness           wild
wings      what they know.

You ask             what is broken?
I walk to the porch.
I walk to the lake.

I walk.
I walk.
I walk.