Gravity
Those are the five identical roofs
of the houses the solstice slides between,
the wind swinging from blush
to blush, straightening elms. Like paved
velvet, the earth-line surfs the tops of fences
then down into its mauve hold on the hedges,
the dusty basketball, the mulch. Where you notice
two deer stuffing the cold into their shirts—
not to make it warm, to bring some back
for their children.
We are running, then,
children now, through acres and stooped
over fallen pecans we will carry
in our shirts back to our house
between darknesses, letting them fold out
over piles of bills and the plastic placemat
printed with a map
of the world. The deer get night
on their hoofs coming
down the highway, the black bears down
from their trees. It is a familiar clicking
their shoes make, pressing into the world
like air. Some of the green stays
on the weeds they walk between, a van
with cinderblocks for tires flashes
toothwhite once. Signal. Black bears.
Detail is tethers from a thing down
toward earth, the downward
tendency of change, of having
been changed. Where did the deer go?
You look up out of the poem,
and the weather is lifting the roofs off the houses
and setting them down and lifting them.
