The blackness seams patches to weeds pulled up into
disappearance, the mirror of what mowed down the shade.
Here, on the rock, the sods cling to malt
while in the melting trees take terrible shape. But still.
And still anyone can see that black is merely green
cover for the soiled and unseen animals. It stretches
over an entire aching to replace what it abuts-
since the gardeners have come and stolen away by day,
it is at peace, perfect, a neat napkin pulled to chin-or gin
as they would say from that more concrete position
from which they wait, and wait until the next day
imperceptibly darkens by just a few more centimeters
and the next a few more and so on, each night
measured in that way, the weight of nature appearing
to impinge by shooting up almost as an addict might, rising,
surging in the tide of tiny increments only to be cut away,
shorn to a matted message of potentialness to where
we standing sip and sigh with our eyes.

2 July 2002