who hit the window and ricocheted into the watering can. I'm so sorry, I said to her, over and over. I sighed down into my toes, then placed her under the pecan tree to soak in sun. Bless the orange paper spirals I taped to every window so the next birds see streamers instead of sky. Bless me for trying so hard and running into these bricks I stack around myself. Last weekend I was drained from over-writing, over-doing. Bless Patrick who saw my face and asked me what I needed. Bless that vision of my brain removed, soaked in spring water a few hours, then re-installed.

Bless the cockroaches for their exoskeletons that’ve let them to crawl for eons. Bless the worm in lane eight at the track yesterday: this tired-looking squiggle, silent. Bless the short eucalyptus stilled by the freeze of '11, now a sculpture for the doves. Bless all of us for trying. For breathing, even now.