let the world

by Zoe Dickinson

Let the world’s sharpness, like a clasping knife,

Shut in upon itself and do no harm

– Elizabeth Barret Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese, XXIV

cool evening air/ diced

by the swallow’s two-pronged tail

as he carves up and down the beach

with swift strokes of his slim knife-

self, unconcerned by me or any other

dull lump of land to be skimmed over

smoothly/ unconcerned by the spikes

my landlord erected at his nesting place,

he teaches fledglings how to fold up

the world’s sharpness, like a clasping knife,

how to caress the contours

of the earth without breaking its skin.

I watch but cannot learn how to bless

this dismembered breeze,

its scant flowering of gnats –

fewer than last year in this drought,

and not enough –

cannot fathom how to make

my grasping human hand

shut in upon itself and do no harm