In the side garden liatris

rings the bird bath

furzed brown skeletons being

slowly stripped to stick figures

by the finches.

Beneath the front feeders peace

hunches along with seventeen doves

but it is this cracked glass framing the

Champs Elysées that holds the truth.

How they dimmed the Eiffel’s lights

in memory of the dozen gunned down

for illustrating the world so others might see

and seeing, consider how to see differently

perhaps, even as other shut their eyes

and elevated themselves to be their deity.

Tracing this fracture, with its single slash

Through the Arc de Triomphe, is to own

a different piece of Legendre than yesterday,

I will leave it unrepaired.