Jigsaw

~ after Jericho Brown

We wake sometimes to what sounds
like animals scrabbling across the roof—

             When in fact it is the wind scraping across the roof,
             thumbing each shingle like an impatient reader the page.

Usually I'm patient, but nowadays it's hard to read pages
in succession: the mind, a field blown open in all directions.

             From a field blown open in all directions, the mind's
             roof gusts open to shelter its many orphans.

Orphan itself, it weaves a roof under which to shelter,
made of gestures, fragments, questions, no answers.

             It constantly rewrites the questions with no answers.
             It seems no one's left, alive, who can answer

puzzles left from long ago, bequeathed to the living;
at night, we wake to jagged sounds of their unfitting.