By Matt Hart

Featured Art by Mike Miller

Potentially, anyway, there is more
to the presence of the tree limb crews
on our street than the way they’re cutting
around the wires and sapping the trees
with their uninspired angling. To be sure,

I am not thinking. I am looking

seriously and deeply in invisible ways
at invisible things—the circulatory systems
of the men with their saws and the blood
going around inside a closed system—
and at visible ones—the squirrels with green

berries and the robins on the awnings—and

it occurs to me in this moment that none of them are
thinking, for example, about mitochondria. I mean,
I don’t know that for certain, but I can be pretty
certain—or certain enough—and it’s obvious
that none of them are looking at me looking

at their hearts beating palpably, the men

and the squirrels and the robins now flown
from the awnings and onto the mailboxes
with the red flags up. Mail is outgoing as the air
in my lungs. How did I drift into this? Potentially,
anyway, I sat up and noticed more than wind

in the trees, and I knew it meant something

sentimental to me, because everything is
if one sees it that way, and I do see it that way,
because that is how I’m wired in the middle
of a life, for better and worse. And yes, I am okay,
and I am not okay both—thanks for asking—

but I do, when I can, wish to overflow and bury

myself in the azaleas of the next world.
Right now, however, I am somewhat content
to feel that the other beings I’m watching
are also feeling things. Some of them are
conscious of this and others probably not,

but everything that moves moves wisely

if you watch, or if you see it that way.
There is something inside us that shows
through our motion. I don’t know for certain,
but I feel pretty sure, or I want to anyway.
Sentimental, I squint until my eyes become

stars, potentially or possibly, I can feel it

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Matt Hart is the author of ten books of poems, most recently FAMILIAR. He lives in Cincinnati, where he teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and plays in the post-punk band NEVERNEW.