My mother’s standing dim-lit in the hall,
talking to Rennie on the telephone.
David takes off my shoes in Bynden Wood.
The day before we’d laid a path of rocks
through Thomson’s Run into the pine-cone dell,
beyond the marsh the guidebook calls a fen.
The fire creeps gingerly, not like a god
but like a boy gone home to bed with books.
Perhaps you are, as I am, harsh in love.
Atop the day is lacquer; heat obtains,
a silence into which a landscape rolls.
I am behind, hauling a log off-trail
through someone’s yard. An amber weathervane,
the wind below the vane, the gnats above.