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“None of them are strange”
– Stevens
Absence advertises here,
where clapboard
houses enjamb the street—a hanging plant,
a porch swing, change on door wreaths autumning.
Walk here any weekend. You see children
war with popguns or finger packets of
cherry bombs among azalea boughs. You
see couples go by twos or, breaking ranks,
in aimless shifting rows. You hear church bells
buoy or sink ideas, you hear them
rhyme the swell breaths made in the grey-white pall.
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Not the hoodless truck
that crosses the bridge
while the town pawls.
Not the two men in front
who cultivate frowns.
Not the boy on his knees
in back bare-back bent
against the cab window,
blood on his arms hands
face belly. Not what’s
below in the leaf-clog
of the bed—his first kill—
the horned head of a deer
lolling right, neck red.
Not to think long of
when they are gone.
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