Jacqueline Powers

Continuum Mechanics

The bird feeder is empty––
deer look haggard and thin.
The first robin swallows its song,
killing the blues.
Dogs turn away in disgust, insist
on peeing on the porch.

The principle
of angular momentum balance:
If I turn one way, you turn the other.
Vector and tensor theory
expressed as doubt.

Under a thin coating of ice
yellow crocus heads try to sink
back into the earth
but somewhere heather is blooming
on a moor.
A strange man wearing
a blue beret smiles at me.

That flash––
the exact moment the sun sets over the bay
and the whole world
turns green, the tide still,
a black reminder.
No one has to sink, you say.

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