Once I went back to a drugstore to buy a second umbrella, 

its crook handle a duck’s neck, an umbrella identical 

 

to the one I had bought, except broken, a jagged tile 

knocked from its retrousse bill; on account of that flaw 

 

I had passed it over; it didn’t look like a kid who had lost 

a tooth; it looked like a kid with a tooth cracked in half; 

 

at home with my perfect umbrella, I felt rueful; I felt like 

I’d snubbed someone sad. 

                                           You could call it a pattern. 

 

Once I parked, half in goldenrod, half in gravel, to retrieve 

a pink horse dropped on the highway, not my sons’, 

 

not mine, and re-screening Star Wars, I weep most 

reliably over the droids’ demise.

 

. . . 

 

                                                         I cannot explain why 

the creaturely move me more, sometimes, than mortals, 

 

why sometimes I can steel myself against flesh–see cords 

of corpse and go, unshattered, on–but not against steel 

 

golems falling down. 

                                           The beginning I can bear, the part 

where a bot lists on turf too soft or buckles at the knees 

 

or clatters sideways, a knob ripped fresh from a door 

in its grip. No, when I say I cry watching a montage 

 

of robots falling down, I mean I cry watching robots trying 

to right themselves, baffled by their own heavy brains.