Christopher Citro

Improving the Odds

For Dustin Nightingale

If he spots a lily by chance at the side of the road,
he'll rush home and make a duplicate
with whatever is to hand—old newspapers, yogurt cups,
cat litter. Then he'll rush back and set his copy up
next to the original—not to replace it, just to
improve the odds that tiny little bit.
There aren't nearly enough beautiful things in the world.
Not enough clean rivers, girls with shaved heads,
blue glass bottles on windowsills, hawks soaring
over ice cream parlors. Two baseball hats in a Camaro
run over a bunny and laugh. Well, now there're two
lilies on the other side of the equation. On the way home,
he passes a limestone rhinoceros in a grade school parking lot.
Tomorrow there'll be two, one limestone, the other made
of old magazines, houseplants and walking sticks.

Christopher Citro's poetry, forthcoming in The Cortland Review, has been published recently in Harpur Palate, The Cincinnati Review, Poet Lore, Permafrost, Faultline, Arsenic Lobster, and Inch Magazine. His poetry has been featured on Verse Daily and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Christopher is co-host of The Poets Weave on the NPR station WFIU.