With no metaphors for what turns and turns, for what
meets the ground from clouds, I collapse in the room
my barn-blue, silicone funnel. My students, as unruffled
as the spectators who they say will idle on the highway
while the sky rotates earthward, go round the rows
with advice. I’ll survive fine in this new city without shelter
underground, they soothe. Get a weather radio, get yourself
a helmet. I jot their notes verbatim so when I later walk
my beagle along the bend and glimpse—held motionless
in the reflection—a formation shaped like a beaver’s tail
in the water, I don’t startle, but look up to where he pulls:
at the egret, the scissortail, the range above us—swallowed!