By William Virgil Davis

She sits in the circle of her tail

and watches out the window

where fluttering finches fight

over the feeder, paying her no

heed. Nonetheless, she is as

patient with her waiting as if

she were slinking somewhere

through tall grasses in another

place or time. Here, she knows

where her next meal will come

from and sleeps all afternoon.

William Virgil Davis’s most recent book of poetry, his sixth, is Dismantlements of Silence: Poems Selected and New. His first, One Way to Reconstruct the Scene, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. His poetry has been published widely worldwide.