Twilit plane trees,
A light fog about the knee of the rock-rucked hill,
and that far-off architecture –
Though but a corncrib, it propounds itself
in hayrick solemnity. And so you fall,
Incognizant and forever, stitching up
arrays, altitudes, splintered distances.
You piece together this hummocky
sense of a presence,
beleaguered nonentity, but sanguine
for all that, because of it. And then that mystery,
The ineluctable undoing:
Compliant, the week’s springy riprap
and this selfsame earth as,
at your footfall, it shifts
into solidity. Then out again, the quicker drift
to what’s unthinkable as you step away
into the unconfirmed, found
as always tilted quiet
against the evening’s smooth
uxorious light.