MOLLY BRODAK
THE MIND
Upslope mist
over alders
reworks the brain
if admired too long.
Almost nothing
isn’t cruel.
You,
wearing down
into earth,
the long-off waves like clocks,
corralling trash
to show us.
Cut just so—
like a gem—
the brain lays
bare no reasons,
no reasons at all.
Just pits
of temperate chance
and little
dark grapes
of love saved for no one,
and your lizard
material, lizard jaws
still sharp and attending,
a scabby rattle
in the brain’s foothills,
that occasionally overrides
cruelty.