"Statuary" by Katherine Larson

The late cranes throwing
their necks to the wind stay
somewhere between
the place that rain begins
& the place that it ends
they seem to exist just there
above the horizon at least
I only see them that way
tossed up
against the grey October
light not heavy enough
for feet to be useful or
useless enough to make
gravity untie its string. I'm sick
of this stubbornness
but the earthworms
seem to think it all right
they move forward
& let the world pass
through them they eat
& eat at it, content to connect
everything through
the individual links
of their purple bodies to stay
one place would be death.
But somewhere between
the crane & the worm
between the days I pass through
& the days that pass
through me
is the mind. And memory
which outruns the body &
grief which arrests it.