Rehab
6 Young Nurse, VA Hospital, 1945
4 Otherworld, Underworld, Prayer Porch
1
Why, then, do I kneel still
striking my prayers on a stone
heart?
R.S. THOMAS
An Absence
Near the end, only one thing matters.
Yes, it has something to do with the moon and the way
the moon balances so nervously
on the ridge of the barn. This is the landscape of my childhood —
my grandfather’s country store, his barn, his pasture.
His chicken houses are already falling, but near the end
only the one thing matters.
It has to do with the prudence of his woods,
the way the trembling needles prove the wind.
Let’s sit here by the fence
and watch for the fox that comes each night to the pasture.
Imagine how the moon cools the water in the cow pond.
Yes, things happen in the cool white spaces,
those moments you turn your head —
the way the trembling branch suggests the owl,
or the print by the pond suggests the fox.
Near the end, though, only one thing matters,
and nothing, not even the fox, moves as quietly.
Studying the Small Hill
Sometimes when my wife and daughter are asleep
I stumble outside
with our dog at three or four in the morning to piss in the yard.
In winter the moon scorches the tree branches,
and in summer it frosts the hillside
with a shabby glaze.
Then the bird feeders standing in the smudged shadows
of the maples
look like human skulls impaled on poles —
and sometimes wind and crickets and tree frogs
make lurid voices in the trees.
This is when I empty myself of anger and resentment,
and listen to them puddle
in the grass at my feet.
Jack runs the fence line and trots out
of the shadows, panting, to piss in the grass beside me.
Often in his eyes there is more to envy
than anything human,
and gauging the frantic influence
of the moon, I study the small hill bleeding shadows.
It’s easy then to affirm the Christ metaphor
and all the tenuous ways
tenderness seeps into the world.
Slow Nights in the Bass Boat
Some nights when the fishing slows,
when the stripers
and hybrids drift through the cove like elusive thoughts,
you crank in the jig, prop the rod in the boat.
Some nights the trees on the bank are black and soundless,
a fat wall of darkness,
and the
