November 16–22, 2009: Buxton Wells and Suzanne Austin

Backyard in February
 
The party’s over–
there was no party  
I step out back—
deliberately, for drink—
with a dozen empties clinking  
I’m under the eaves of dead fathers,
where lightning arcs through vascular trees
to thrash in the underground  
The ground is softened
after the hard rains
and liable to give way  
This is less catharsis
than diuresis,
with bright clouds edged around
 
a beaten misshapen moon,
the branches scissoring
and parting in silhouette below  
I am at home in the dark trees,
like raccoons in our crawlspace
are loose in the wild  
I would not move against the trees
or blaze them on my way,
or sacrifice beneath them,
 
but only burn them
slowly down with my urine
like a crocodile  
–
 
The ancient trees go down at night
when the thunder cracks
and the rain softens the ripping sound
 
of deep roots giving, of trunks falling
through neighboring arms
of younger, lesser trees  
The downslope plunge is the way of old trees
caught up in their towers and water rights,
walled off for years against gravity  
And now they’re dead, my yard gone
sliding into them, leaving bars of mud and sand
built out from half-buried trunks  
Fingers of smaller drainages are headed
toward the house, to bring it down to a cracked
foundation  
Gaps are opened, the black earth runs
beneath a patter of leaves, upslope
of the mass wasting, the bottomless give  
–
 
This month is bitter awareness month I’d choose some other observance What held my attention, the dark
 
has absorbed What started as pain
is a tenderness I come back inside, to wife
and child, by the carport light
 
and gently shoulder the kitchen door Not that I know what I’m sniffing for, but
the old house smells like a crotch  
The creepers have climbed to the overhang,
threatening the house, calling it
wonder of nature
 
to insinuate and claim what is natural The tendrils have wound through
the window frame in the back bathroom,
 
where I once saw a rodent thrashing away
in the toilet bowl I found it disturbing—
and drowning, too, in seeming desperation  
Just how it arrived there and how
I retrieved it, I don’t recall It’s all taken down by the animals—
 
it may be significant, maybe the end
of some stellar event, that ends
with this house on our backs  
–
 
O best beloved,
remember in moonshine
our good abode,
 
that breathed not a word
to a living soul, but freely offered
its backside to the woods
–
 
If the sun comes out late
tomorrow, it will throw a different light
on the buff-colored sides of our house  
I give you the book cliffs, the limestone
shelves, the iron-rich skein
of a red sky  
In four months’ time–after a final glut
of rain–we’ll be green again, the dead
outlasted, overgrown We’ll try
 
the unsuspecting way, let trees
be spread wide above us, the ground
stabilized beneath our feet  
The hot breath of June
will not penetrate.