But it was all right to have believed in something,

                        —Deborah Digges

to have tried, if not your best, your most uncollapsing,

             your most not unardent, your least breakable as a thin, thin shell.

But it was all right you ignored the house most wanting to be glass,

            that you were the bushy tail of the fox, as if that animal

were all tail, one giant stabilizing appendage, always steady

            except when you weren’t, always and never on your knees,

always saying you should be on your knees because

            there are avalanche lilies along the path to the sun so bright

it fogs the view of islands that remind you of forested turtles,

             and it was all right that your friend tried even harder,

stood on tiptoe while you stood with your heels firmly rooted

             in the duff, but okay, at least you tried, like that Nike

T-shirt says, at least you believed in locusts and lightning,

             at least you recognized the navel in the Sunkist,

the indentations of apple seeds forming a star.

Martha Silano is the author of five books of poetry, including Gravity Assist, Reckless Lovely, and The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, all from Saturnalia Books. She also co-authored, with Kelli Russell Agodon, The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice (Two Sylvias Press). Martha’s poems have appeared in Paris Review, Poetry, American Poetry Review, New England Review, and North American Review, where she received the James Hearst Poetry Prize. Her work appears in many anthologies, including The Best American Poetry series (Norton). Martha has received writing fellowships to Yaddo, the Millay Colony for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the University of Arizona Poetry Center, and she was a Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident. Martha teaches at Bellevue College, near her home in Seattle, WA.