November Field

After the rainfall, a snail draws its silver line across the stone step.

The earth is trying something underneath— you feel it in the softness of the ground, a stirring, like a sleeper holding breath

August is a thief who comes dressed as a gift: the peach at its most golden

The windows fog with everything we've made— the stew, the bread, the kettle's weary sigh— and past the glass the garden starts to fade

Praise the cracking open of the seed, the blind ambition of the buried root, the robin's first bewildered, breathless creed

The house at three a.m. becomes a throat that hums with all the things we didn't say, and I lie still as someone in a boat