Unpackaged

The first thing I did this morning

was read a poem.

It was about blueberries

and it made me cry

not about the blueberries

but about the field

and the deer

and the way you can dislodge a cork

from the cool neck of a Sonoma Coast red

but you can’t rustle the yellow tarweed

with your boot

or be blown backward by the slippery Pacific wind

because “there’s life, and then there’s later”

and so I walked out into the woods of now

looking for a cardinal

or something to dazzle me,

kicking nothing but old glass bottles with the toe of my boot.