Found in Willow Springs 85
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The Hive
Someone else’s loss, buzzing through the garden
like the bee that got under your shirt and landed
in your chest hair but didn’t sting; someone’s grief
right there like a stone in the almost-raining afternoon
with the smell of horse-sweat and mowed grass and hot
asphalt. You held my hand as we stood
at the fence and called out to those horses, and felt
the first raindrops and smelled the cooling road.
Someone else’s tragedy passing like an awkward truck
climbing our dirt road, unbalanced by the dead woman’s
bulky furniture, and the potholes. Someone else
looking out her window at the strangers standing
on the road squinting at her door as though
expecting it to open, then walking slowly on.
Down the hill, trucks rip out the clear-cut tree-stumps
and we think of the coyote who slunk across our yard
with a squirrel in its jaws, and we think of the bears
at our garbage. There were birds calling out like children
playing hide-and-seek, pretending to be hurt
somewhere deeper in the woods, and you tell me you love me
like fingernails, like hair; you love me like breath
when you’re sleeping, wrapped up in dust while the crows
in our closets make darkness from the clothes we never wear,
and the walls of our bedroom hum like swarming wasps.
I Wake
in the middle of the night to something moving
across the porch outside our bedroom,
sliding furniture around
and muttering. It’s raining, but I’m sure I hear footsteps,
so I hold myself still. The sprigs of flowering
dogwood my wife has collected glow
in the moonlight by the window; she snores peacefully
beside me. I’m naked. Today a red-tailed hawk
swooped across our garden, to vanish in the woods
before I was sure what I saw, so
I didn’t say anything. Later, we had dinner
with a friend who’s grown suddenly old, and as
we said our goodbyes, she told us again
about the day her husband left her,
out of the blue, when her adult children
were toddlers. It hasn’t stopped hurting she said
as she closed her front door. Driving home, I noticed
my wife was crying, face turned to the window.
I thought of pulling over, reaching out, asking her
to tell me what was wrong, but that road is difficult
to follow at night, and I wasn’t even sure
she was crying, after all, when I looked over again,
so I drove on in silence, keeping my eyes
on the road, respecting that darkness.
