Not unlike those birds

in the park, netted and tagged,

tossed again to the sky.

Just as air returns water to itself;

the transaction is mostly imagined

like love or grief.

But the birds knew the difference:

the before-net

and after-net selves

and I,

before the body's turning,

and after, where some prospect

of ghost lies fallow

the cells learn to speak

only in constellations of scars.