Beware deep rivers.
Rocks that fit the hand.
Well-dressed waiters who don’t meet your eyes.
Cities with underfunded zoos.
Sleep is a calculated risk.
Like a picnic with wine that lasts all afternoon.
The first radar disks looked only in one direction.
Keep your loved ones from knowing.
Tell your pillow that realism
only looks like fear. Beware your pillow.
It knows too much. Keep your war
between 42 and 58 degrees Fahrenheit.
If you are a bear, don’t climb the fence
of an air base at dusk. If you are on guard,
fire at the shadow but recognize
that it might be a bear. Are you classified?
Are you prepared? “This is only a test,”
the radio announcer says. Which is what
he would say if someone held him at gunpoint.
Keep your loved ones from knowing.
The price of eternal vigilance
is knowing the many hours between 3 and 4 a.m.,
is blood-pressure pills, is a missile launch triggered
by a flight of swans or moonrise over Norway.
Sarah Lindsay