I imagine a daughter—a child can be anything, I’m aware, but she feels a mirror of me & so: 

a daughter— and you, genderless love. For us, inosculation, a marriage of trees &

for her a christening into a veneration of river ecologies, no talk in this dream

of mass extinction, no talk of desertification my daughter alights to school 

against a sky painted in gentle film grain. So I have this tiny utopia, this 

20-minute city, & I have the version where everyone is a blank

where everyone used to be, shadowless shadows—& I know

somewhere there’s a bigger dream to be had, brash & 

serious & anarchist & engineered with clay we can 

rewet & rewet, but here, in the shrink, it’s always:

just one old forest left, just an emerald ash not 

hollowed by bores, just moss, just a worn-out 

couch, just a curry dinner, a copper pot, just 

a window that it is safe to open, just not 

the prophesied blast of methane, just

to touch the top of your hand with

my fingertip, just a pen & paper, 

just the same four things to do 

each morning, just a life 

my child might

forgive

me

f-

o-

r

. 

My

frie-

nds 

& I are

accused 

of the sin of 

expectation: I don’t 

think the world owes me 

but don’t I owe the world 

a gentle life, a part of myself,

a dedication or some new religion

based on these whittled wants: past these, 

above them, in what they require, I can almost 

imagine—