i am on a bus again winding through
taiwan's backyard. from kaohsiung
to kenting the sun hits every sharp bend,
pastures sparkling in summer light, my arm
lolling on the cheap black plastic. i spot
a lone scarecrow doing guard duty, then
mottled rows of barbed wire as the bus
rushes past, clothes hanging by
a thread, red scraps fluttering with an
ordinary girl-next-door kind of beauty,
windmills of wheat blowing golden chaff
like dandelions over fields dotted
with green knobs. how easy it is
to overlook the countryside as a frame
in one of Monet's impressionist paintings, until
the spectacle catches me by surprise:
a twisted barn owl, freshly dead,
slick like a wet wound. for dust we are
and to dust we shall return: nature the
hand of God that cracks my heart open
like a chestnut, and eats it.