By the time I understood it, I had no need to recount it.

Some music comes up through the storm—that’s when you should

     worry.

It’s not the worst-case scenario, the pilot said, but it’s as bad as it

     could ever get.

Shovel the snow from the boat!

Or snow rises through a hole in the boat, you could walk ashore,

     but what’s sea, what’s shore.

The worst-case scenario would be even more rhapsodic.

Like—what?—the boat is also snow? Your hand is?

No, like the boat is the boat, totally, and your hand is totally your

     hand, each item utterly only totally itself.

I had no need to understand it.

Piano rising in the storm.

I preferred the involuntary lavender.

I preferred the near expanse, compound of wrists and silt.

How many years until you stop counting, and being astonished by,

     how many years?

Or by then are you durably astonished.

I count the permissible neglects, and the eventual omens, as bean

     sprouts in a colander.

*

Zach Savich is the author of eight books of poetry and prose, including Daybed (Black Ocean, 2018). Recent work has appeared in A Dozen Nothing, Always Crashing, Full Stop, andthe Georgia Review. He teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art.