Before and After the Forklift

Before it was lowered over 
the broken city grid and 
became my second house
it was a meadow where 
the grasses grew tall.

I watched the top shell of earth
being moved and hauled away,
saw everything leveled to sand, 
except a thick, distant  forest with a 
thin stream that bled to the city park—

and did not shed a single tear.
All I knew that this was  my reward 
for surviving sickness and storms,    
my final place to rest and settle my bones,
a place without a history of battles.

After the house’s first shudder and mud 
had splashed my face did I know that the 
soil always tasted of the slow dying of birds
who lived a long time in the air and bequeathed 
their bones to the sky- flesh, blood to the dirt.