While ripples are shrugged off
the edges

of puddles
and vanish

Rain over everything like that,


with its swollen 
knuckle over knuckle,

bamboo
is an abacus—

a tool for counting
to the present.


We’re equally vigilant.


We scroll pages
as if scanning thickets

on a long trek
through a dream.

—

Rae Armantrout is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of
fifteen books of poetry, including Wobble, Entanglements, Partly,
and Versed. A new collection, Conjure, is available now from
Wesleyan University Press. She lives in Everett, Washington.