& she tells me the sugar maples

will turn early this year, drought

& the highway expansion project

draining their final green weeks

before they firework into fall.

I ask her how she can prophesy,

how she can graft their endings

to them while the still-summer

land convalesces in the shade

& she couldn’t say no to a snake.

She says I’ll learn that a raccoon

bite leads to redemption.

That visions induced by rabies

have their place in the brain

just like any other daydream.

I ask her why she breeds

calamity here among the tiger

lilies. Why she strikes rocks

as if she could crack them open

& access the water inside.

She calls me silly girl, tells me

to touch her fruit-stained face

so I understand the ratio of want

to fulfillment, the ratio of lab

mice to those that are freed.

I leave her, the caged circus

animal she’s become, this animal

pacing & stopping only

to wrap her claws around

iron bars before slithering away.