Imagine living, the cannonball clean  
through the sternum, a hole the size  
of a coffee can kept for old screws 
and rusted nails. Imagine walking away,  
the fields, the streets, the years, a prodigy  
of forgetting, dangling flaps and shreds  
and nerve-ends slowly pulled back, ribs  
and spine knitting around the mouth of it, 
everything smoothing over. Till even you 
believe it didn’t happen, couldn’t, the physics  
isn’t right, but how else explain the uptick,  
mid-chest, these late October afternoons,  
the colors, the light, all that, and a volume  
of air, cool on the edges, passing through.