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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 is author of Draft of a Letter, Fleet River, and The Resistance to Poetry. He teaches at the University of Rochester.
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