Dave Bonta's "Extremities" moves through a string of anxious images that build toward grief. It begins at the edge of a black hole, where things get pulled past the point of return, and the speaker says "we go / to extreme lengths." After that come small, twitchy pictures of nerves: a speaker chirping like a caged finch, and a "you" who is "beside yourself," an angel of anxiety forever shedding feathers.
The nesting talk turns bitter when the couple "feather our nest / with eviction notices," suggesting that home and security are under threat. Then the poem opens a hope chest, a traditional place for storing a future, and finds cedar so fresh it seems perfect for a stillborn child's coffin. The poem doesn't say outright what happened, but judging by this ending, the hopes were for a child who never lived. The final phrase, "cherished unknown," holds love and loss together. The mood is jittery and fragile at first, then quiet and stunned.