All summer long
while other trees
reached for more

The atmosphere surrounding you
reaches heights in which
it changes things

The wind and the rain, the trees swung like a bell
all across Massachusetts in the fall,
and the torn fog steaming from the yellow mountains,

 When they start to wear your clothes
do their dreams become more like yours
who do they look like

They say the sun will come back
at midnight
after all
my one love

The father of two silver medal figure skaters
said, “When they were eight and ten, I built a rink, twenty
by forty in the yard, without a fence. There was nothing

The blackened river ran through the park.
Past there, the numb gardens
were hemmed by thick braids of hedges.

A soft, motiveless conversation that might never end
In a country of size, so beautiful days did not finger each ear.
Near one end grackles, the birds in armor,

There is skill to it, how you hold your back all day, the dole
of force behind the stroke, the size of bite, where
to hit, and knowing behind each swing a thousand others wait

But in the stippled, rose velvet
Buds of staghorn sumac, in rust-
  Bright veins of briar,