he comes home, the headache gone, ten staples, what happens next is I sleep through the night, I find I can read a book, pages & pages without waking from the continuous dream, what happens next? I remember to go outside, to lift carry pile rocks when the piles merge I’ll have a wall my weeds are four feet high undaunted by drought, yellow & white orange & lavender bloom, the trees decked, my cart path bowered grasses brimming with grain groundhog homeboy the digging fool adds a back door near the barn where the chicken house stood let’s have no more story instead scuff soil, discover seed twice daily I water the field of sod a few green spears rise from wilted clumps, so what if I wake glum? make the bed before it gets away through the crystal the sky says gray the cat says purr, another day how long can the barn swallow leave her eggs before they’re cold? twelve-tone birds fly up over down house finch, goldfinch, phoebe a lot to say about daily nothing three swallows hatch, great blue lifts from the river, shuttered from sight by summer’s veiling one turkey mines corn stubble mid-June & not yet plowed where’s the farmer? where’s the turkey’s flock? one kernel leads to another, a bluebird box unmowed wetland cleaves the acre, daytime typology midfield a great branched maple under a plank bridge across a gully paw & claw marks in milk-colored mud long curving swipes on the trail rotten tree trunks shredded for grubs torn fibers rust red, zest yellow bark ripped from roots to bear-height bare trunk scratched & exposed ash borer’s D-shaped holes robins bound from branch to earth woodpeckers drum, a sunlit glade we nearly missed — John tells me I don’t scan, I must forgo speech let the woods speak, maple & oak popple & beech, moss mounds top-40 bird song, high middle low yet no maestro, no black tie & tails when I itch, everything balloons when I hike, everything camouflages when I read, every letter mimes an ant when I look, everything & everyone are here