Sit happily on the edge

A jump off the diving board

would knock over the stack

of books that Barbie uses as a staircase.

The unhappy boy wears

two hamburger hats while the bird

sits happily on the edge

of a knife. This is not real life. Mean

-while, a man tells me

to put the peonies in cages.

Barbarous times. Thin the limb. What use

the wing? Stop this blindness to abundance!

Were you not just telling

your students they must learn

to sit with contradiction?

A prairie must burn to bloom. A cage

creates the perfect conditions

for abundance.