Gravity

Those are the five identical roofs

of the houses the solstice slides between,

the wind swinging from blush

to blush, straightening elms. Like paved

velvet, the earth-line surfs the tops of fences

then down into its mauve hold on the hedges,

the dusty basketball, the mulch. Where you notice

two deer stuffing the cold into their shirts—

not to make it warm, to bring some back

for their children.

We are running, then,

children now, through acres and stooped

over fallen pecans we will carry

in our shirts back to our house

between darknesses, letting them fold out

over piles of bills and the plastic placemat

printed with a map

of the world. The deer get night

on their hoofs coming

down the highway, the black bears down

from their trees. It is a familiar clicking

their shoes make, pressing into the world

like air. Some of the green stays

on the weeds they walk between, a van

with cinderblocks for tires flashes

toothwhite once. Signal. Black bears.

Detail is tethers from a thing down

toward earth, the downward

tendency of change, of having

been changed. Where did the deer go?

You look up out of the poem,

and the weather is lifting the roofs off the houses

and setting them down and lifting them.