TONIGHT


ten years ago today


Tonight, here, on the edge of the West,
we are sweating in a bistro, drinking
iced cider and doughuts as the leaves
fall down around us in the hot wind.
Lightning glistens off the windows
and surrounds us in dramatic flashes--
it's just so damned big out here,
so open, no place to hide in all this
flatness, this is everything we're
afraid of, and love, the darkness,
all of this October heat, the wind,
all the withered trees rattling husks,
and driving here all day, in the dying
afternoon haze, the highway lined
with skunks and bloated deer and the lovely
smell of decay, and then, in the grove
of birch we saw a rolled car and medics
kneeling in deep grass over a body.
All around us, the world was
turning lavender and rust, bending
to the wind, and in the hills, the cattle
were slowly coming home. The sky wheeled
with hawks, as if what was happening here,
here of all places, mattered, and I thought back
to how ten years ago my father died,
how these things come to matter in ways
we can never really know.