After the old man fell
and broke his hip working in the garden
the shrubs next door grew free,

Each evening now the ash blue flame
swept from my fingertips
climbing its gas ladder up the flue

It was fever that made the world
burn last summer, that afternoon
when I lay watching the sun pour

That year, sea-fog in tufted hanks
spun through the eucalyptus tops
below our attic flat,

I was edging along a deer trail
past halfway into a thicket so dense
the tarweed stains never washed out

Look how the snow drifts
       flare on the Soracte’s slopes
—there, straining branches

where all forgotten things will find their lasting
home was never lost or touched by need

“It was only a pictured face,” I wanted to rant
back at Hazan’s film, “not the gift you looked for”