Aged mothers gape at television.
Father, recently sterilized, putters with his equipment
    in the shed. Quietude, an absence
of spoken plans, the uselessness of revolt, all these

are taught now as electives at the university. Someone
shakes water off his fingers; it looks like light.
    A friend calls to say he's giving up friendship.
A postcard from an ex-lover who wants me to know
she has children now, dozens of them, ha ha.
And the light dispersing, gusting, crackling as it goes,
   the vast encumbrances of the leaves, the
magisterial roll bars of the big branches,

the strong straight torsos jammed into earth, that night erases.