Small “e” earth

I am tired of bearing
someone else’s outrage,
when the prairie
has no use for pity:
a rattlesnake’s quick arc,
or the bitch
brush wolf dragging
her shot leg to the hunt.

One cold evening,
by mistake,
we left a tub of water,
a five-gallon bucket,
out back uncovered, and
in the morning
a chipmunk stood
suspended there
as if he were praying.
He had fallen in.

I don’t like to think
of him trying to
scale the impossible
slick sides
as we watched the news,
as we were sleeping,
but the sun came
through the piñon
all the same.

A writer I know says
he never capitalizes
the planet earth:
if it’s abstract to you,
a great blue pearl, and
not the fine flour
of the mesa
under your feet
there isn’t much hope
for it anyway,
and

if you can see the Earth
from space
you have already lost it.
You might never come back.

I have learned to put a
stick in the bucket
now: even if there is no
self-pity here,
there is room enough for
regret, for the
unmistakable whirr
of broad-tailed birds
in May —

another of those words
I’m tempted to spell in
small case: in may
we may set out,
we may,
becoming animal, drag our
shot legs to the hunt,
the cabin door swinging
useless, the earth piling
against our progress.