One man sits in the street
and hooks his eyes on those who pass,
then whistles at them in the tongues
of not-quite-familiar birds.

Another wears black leather and a ten-gallon hat,
and shouts about the coming of the Lord
into the nightshade box hidden in his hand.
The smiling woman buying quiche and apples,

who’s kept herself in trim for Mr Right,
will go to bed tonight and slit her throat.
And I write poetry, and poetry
walks along the edge of all such things

and sometimes the temptation’s there
to step quickly over the line
into the path of what comes roaring out of the dark.
But for now I’ll start another poem,

shut behind my crimson door,
while up the street the man has found
a strange new bird of paradise,
and the Lord has come just a little closer

and a small black choir sings in the woman’s mouth,
like the sound of distant shorelines
endlessly reshaping
in the rage where land encounters the sea.

The air is cooler now, the summer gone,
the old estate begins to store its shadows
and the pond is quiet among the trees.

Do curve and swoop remain
when the swifts have flown?

The arcs of cardiograph and church’s door
are in the meteor’s final flare,
yet the eye looks back across the dusk

and far beyond: the trajectory’s
still there, reaching back to the moment
the pebble’s wandering began.

The walls of the old house have vanished now,
but the rooms, which were the spaces in between,
remain, floating high above me in the evening air.

I think of those who lived their lives up there,
their griefs and fireside laughter, arguments and loves:
now a sunset in the distance and a scented breeze.

I feel their presence in the autumn woods,
the way the fallen drops are there
in the stillness of a fountain pool.

And as I wonder how they yet persist,
I feel cool fingers brush my face,
their flesh the stuff of curve and swoop.