The sun fell freely through the mesh deer fence,

The material being too thin to interfere

Or leave on the ground any trace of its design

As he helped his mother with her garden,

Covering the newspapers they had laid in rows

With handfuls of straw while she raised the hose

To soak pages against the catch of the wind.

In the idle months between fall and spring

These layers of straw and faded news would smother

Weeds and restore the soil, as her mother,

She said, had taught her, and for a while he works

Hard in the path of his mother’s shadow,

Daydreaming, as boys do, of everything

Else he would do when they were finished.

But when pages shudder and begin to rise

Toward him on the ruffle of a breeze, his eyes

Land upon headlines and photos from the war

And his mind begins to swim. Everywhere

He has turned his entire life it has been

In the background, on TV, in conversations

His parents tried to whisper without him,

And in his silhouette as in another dream

Darkness falls where the brim of his cap lies thrown

Over the dead looking up as he looks down,

And he sees around him news stacked in bales

Leaving stains on the ground as long as graves

Beside tools glinting with the shine of guns

As he imagines them, and bullets spent

In all directions caught in the flint of stones

That follow footprints behind him too close

Or the other way around, broken limbs

Taking shape inside the body bags of debris,

And a face, and a mouth left in a scream

Presses against the green bursting toward him,

And he looks up to look away to find

Leaves blown in a ribbon of what remains

No longer alive along the base of the fence

Moving toward him from all sides with fingers

Lit and trembling – until he sees a body

Plowed in black and white across the ground

And thinks for a second they have him until

He hears her asking, “What are you doing?”

 

 

It took days with a crowbar in his hands
Swung full force, one rotted board at a time
Taking the brunt of the steel and splintering
Or breaking loose of the old post, a doorway
Flung open toward the abandoned pasture

With each board removed. He wrenched each post
Loose from the ground and its shadow with it,
Post by post rising with him as he rose
With his grip under the nails the boards
Had hung from, and it all fell at his feet.

He let the fire take care of the rest,
The wood turning to cinders and ash
That found updrafts with the smoke and spun
On currents away from him or discovered
His sweat and became a graying second skin

 

Over his bared back and arms as he shoveled
Dirt into the postholes darkening under
Him as they filled. Finally his shadow lay
Flat upon the surface he had made
Whole, and he had nothing more to do. Time

And the ceaseless spread of grass and weeds would fill
In where the fence had stood and the land would
Seem as if it had never been broken.
He would have what he had decided on –
This clear view, this piece of earth he was letting go.

 

 

 

Looking for room

To breathe

Amid the argument

Of arguments

That spring

They step outside

To find silence

And clothes

On the line

Becoming the shapes

Of bodies

In the breeze

And the fox

Beneath

Sunning himself

Till he sees

Them

Seeing him

And as if

Stillness

Had motion

Rises

With one look

Back

The way foxes move

As if not parting

The air

And under swelling

Forms, passes

Through the leaves

Of the bush

He never seemed

To have left

Leaving them

Near the line

Turning