Squirrels

Something blurred, warmed

in the eye’s corner, like woodsmoke

becoming tears;

but when you turned to look

the stoop was still, the pumpkin

and tacky mum pot wouldn’t talk —

just a rattle

at the gutter and a sense

of curtains, somewhere, pulled.

Five of   them later, scarfing the oak’s

black bole,

laying a dream of snakes.

Needy and reticent

at once, these squirrels in charred November

recall, in Virgil,

what it is to feel:

moods, half-moods,

swarming, then darting loose; obscure

hunches that refuse

to speak, but still expect

in some flash of   luck

to be revealed. The less you try

to notice them,

the more they will know of  you.