Extra Hidden Life, among the Days. Brenda Hillman

Composition: Fringe Lichen: Tilde & Mãe 15 Composition: Under Cypresses, Near Big Sur 16 Of Monarchs Again, Especially the Stripes 17 So, Bacteria Also Have Their Thunder 18 Angrily Standing Outside in the Wind 19 [Untitled Day] 20 Species Prepare to Exist after Money 21 Extra Hidden Life, among the Days 22 Mountain Pond Landscape, in a Drought 24 As a Sentence Leaves Its Breath 25 Some Kinds of Forever Visit You 26 The Bride Tree Lives Three Times 27 In the Forest of Blue Aptitude 28 II. Near the Rim of the Ideal A Short Rhyme for Amiri Baraka 31 A Summer Song from Old Berlin 32 Untitled & Translation to Portuguese 33 Curl of Hair in a Drawer 35 The Family Sells the Family Gun 37 Describing Tattoos to a Cop 40 Chicago Black Friday Protest Near Apple 42 Crypto-Animist Introvert Activism 43 Triple Moments of Light & Industry 45 To a Life Ended in Winter 46 Hearing La Bohème after the March 47 Near the Rim of the Ideal 50 III. Metaphor & Simile 53 IV. Two Elegies The Rosewood Clauses 97 Her Presence Will Live beyond Progress 117 V. Two Odes A Poem for a National Forest 135 A Poem for a National Seashore 155 Acknowledgments & Notes 171

       I. The Forests of Grief & Color

      Perhaps grief is imagined to end in violence, as if grief itself could be killed. Can we perhaps find one of the sources of nonviolence in the capacity to grieve, to stay with the unbearable loss without converting it into destruction? If we could bear our grief, would we be less inclined to strike back or strike out? And