We watch PBS and learn
how every bird was a dinosaur,
how the earliest whales were wolves
who found the water good
and disappeared into it. I get high
enough to see that death is merely
a change of form and the horse
already the dust its hooves kick up.
Soon we’ll be stars or shells
or wings. Already I am the sound
of a harp disappearing,
a green field in a spoiled land,
an empty 30-gallon plastic drum.
I am falling asleep on the sofa
while the TV burns on and if only
we had a child to inherit
this pillow on which my grandmother
needlepointed a rabbit. Unlike
all things not made of thread,
it knows no fear of death.
Sarah Barber’s second book, Country House, was published by Pleiades Press in October 2018. Her first book, The Kissing Party, was published by the National Poetry Review Press in April 2010. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Crazyhorse, FIELD, The Journal, The Georgetown Review, Malahat, Fugue, Crab Orchard Review, Columbia Poetry Review and Ninth Letter, among other places. She teaches poetry and British literature at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY.