Pock-marked—yet her face is perfection,
(or close enough for the reach of praise)

each enlarged pore, pit a star
in the banner weaving across sleek cheeks

below the hunter eyes that pay no
serious attention to past struggles

with oil, hormones, and stress,
but stake the opposing orbs

that must notice the pinprick fields, blooms,
before caught above, beyond the necessary scars.

The grass crackled and frozen
looking like sand and salt
in the Egyptian desert,

the source of natron that
preserved the eviscerated
and brain-hollowed bodies

of dead pharaohs, still
draws down a gaggle
of Canada geese who must

remember the site and near
river of life much shorter
than the Nile but sustaining

enough even in the tired
and soiled days of February
for those beaks that peck

and webs that stride upon last
year’s vegetation that will
renew without a weighing

of heart against feather
by Anubis, the jackal-head,
so the big birds

don’t have to worry
their mortal souls.