After dragging my body belly 

down through
years of right-turning tunnels, I am
out again, in light a white worm of every seven years or so.

That’s how she sees it –

after life jams her through all that time of
underground inching
I go in the door: the green and pink scarf
is a husk in the hatbasket. I expected more.

The circle

is plural. Polka dots:
the mind’s eyes on the dog’s old bed, the dog
a dart beside it.

If I go back, I’m the mom of a kid
who crossed a great distance to be here, standing
in the dirt with a giant zucchini – the kid
of a mom. I’ll stay.

but what is the opposite of almost the opposite?
It isn’t, or not the same.

Well or ill, a circle
on a square, the dog
didn’t lay there, rathering
always, a walk – a walk! A walk!

Now the dog is dead. No he’s not.