Path shifting in the woods
With sunlight, darkness, and at dusk
The little voices
Returning to their nests.
First rule: there is

No one else.
Towee, towee

Repeated in the trees
Behind the shopping mall,
Tiny breaths escaping from the larynx—

Follow me, follow me—
A knothole: two eyes

Glistening, smaller
Than mine.
They vanish when a cloud slips past.
Beyond the arbor,
Scent of the lilacs, footprints

Leading from the kitchen
Over the dry grass, silver, moonlit—
Before the light turns
Indigo, nothing between

My face and finitude—the long
Time I will live a place
I don’t live now—

They sing, their black
Eyes flickering.
Second rule: the absence

Of other people
Proves we’re alive.

—James Longenbach

James Longenbach's most recent books are Fleet River and The Resistance to Poetry. He teaches at the University of Rochester.

Originally published in the February/March 2005 issue of Boston Review