How will the porcupine fair
between happily and hospitals?
Forget your legends.
Bitter root we have come
to the middle, and what keeps us now
has nothing to do with last minute.
In the castle they know everything
but the porcupine is still worried.
Close by billy goats are praying for us,
think in a hospital bed,
tubes down the throats of today.
What keeps us now?
The raven is bored.
What keeps us?
The porcupine has its arms full of timing,
on a day that is fair and rushing.
The porcupine has only to be wandering,
how we all ought to be wandering,
how much delight of a busy body.
Weather, our reality, has its own
agenda but our schedules
chance on a golden opportunity to float.
As we swim we ought to slow ourselves down,
with lazy applause.
Farewell rabbits, horses, badgers making coffee,
the porcupine is setting out,
as well as the lumberjack in the shining afternoon,
and the princess with her stitches falling out, dancing
feet cracking out of their shoes.
What keeps the porcupine keeps us all.
Every year someone else joins the other team,
and the fish remember not to make faces at the hooks.
Jessica Dylan Miele is co-founder of Jellyfish Magazine and an MFA student at UMass Amherst. She is currently working on a novel with a constantly evolving title. She has an infatuation with Ada Lovelace and the history of inventions.