Rhinoceros

At sunrise, the morning after the party,

I hear our white rhinoceros

Stumbling through the rosemary bed.

Hoary lawn. Light pissing in

Over the eastern rooftops.

From my bed on the second floor,

I hear the familiar fizz of the poachers’ tires.

Same Toyota, tightening its circles.

There’s a square of green lawn

In my backyard the size of two bodies.

It’s the only patch I still water.

Good for lying back to look up at the overcast sky

Lit white by the city.

Our rhinoceros sniffs in the low grass

For some old smoldering

Gone cold a long time now.

His dreams rush over the arctic surfaces

Behind the bones of his skull, behind his eyes.

He hardly fits in my front yard.

You can’t call it cruelty

Because he chooses to stay.

Still, I know he’s just too lonely to go.

When he was smaller,

He’d stomp at the feet of smokers

Over for a beer or barbeque.

Now he can’t be allowed near the guests.

He’s drawn masochistically to fires.

He must weigh five thousand pounds.

The moment I saw him

I knew he wouldn’t last in the city.

But he stayed—below my kitchen window,

Thumping heavily through the garden,

Observing all the bits of eyes and skin.

He was watching us that night

Through the tangle of chain link

And butternut squash vines

When you kissed the white underbelly of my right forearm.

He knows about grazing,

About taking what comes, and how to go on living

Despite the value of his death.

I know about the tangled shape your hair takes

After all the pins and clips come out.

I know that you cry for your husband sometimes.

In the evenings, when I know it’s worst for him,

I take his face in my hands—

Buttock-sized jowls, bottle-sized olfactory passages full of my scent,

Hair sprouting from his ears as they flick

And listen in different directions.

It’s a wonder he keeps all the sounds

Straight in his head,

Their sources and meanings.

My cheek touches his horns

And he knows that I love him,

But it only makes him sadder—

That he can’t make me any happier,

Or any less lonely,

That I can do neither for him.

I know that you plan to leave this city,

And it may not matter whether or not I water

That square of lawn. But I remember

The white gasp of your neck

The first time I heard my fingers touching it,

Our rhinoceros watching us through the fence

As buds turned sharp and burst.

Forgive me.

I wasn’t really listening.