White geese and other assorted water birds

in a brown swamped field

and gray, of course, and we send our friend

poems to read in jail. We rip off and dip

our bread into the shared soup and burst with

hypothetical situations in which we would not deal

in hypotheticals about what is the deal.

We have watched the birds

have stayed up all night with

each other, each an other in another field

and jumping in a river we each experience our own dip

but we are all swimming with friends

together. There is nothing like swimming with friends,

or singing or dancing or being with them, a deal

between people that contractually (though informally) links them through the humps and dips

and ditches and they will not be so bad, and the birds

will be noticed, shooting stars declared, the fields

rolled and romped in. There is nothing like with,

and when you are having troubles with “with”

there is nothing like friends

who would never let you stand too long alone in a desolate field

without anyone to help you deal

with concerns that are truly for the birds,

or to point out the color of the sun as it dips

like on days when my spirits dip

and I am sick with

worry over the looming orbit of carrion birds

about how they circle, salivating with vicious friends

or about how I don’t see being eaten as a big deal

these are the days like a muddy field,

when the pure down of geese absorbs the field’s

dirty brown, and they must dip

their beaks in mud because that is what they must deal

with as they share a buffet of worms with

the other birds, and here they are metaphorically us, friends,

though there they are literally birds.

I feel I could handle an eternity of muddy fields with

puddled dips as long as I had friends

to help me deal, and birds.