Libra

Patricia Jakovich VanAmburg

These days

a one-legged cardinal

totters at my feeder

a new yogi

dangling mysteries like

his lost leg

what happens inside

the shell, the tomb

how stars are born

and die

the ways we grasp

for substance.

Equilibrium.

Flitting

from task to task and

the objects of our desire—

bridging the poles:

the difference between

eternity and nothing

the sameness of

poet and bird.

Weighing things:

my father on two legs

one of them artificial,

my father on one leg

his stump reaching

to ground or

my father’s eyes

after dialysis,

my mother falling,

tripping through

overfull rooms

and

the empty house – tugs

on my shoulder as

I pose by the window.