To cover the bones of your fence. To placate the crows. For the cleaning up late fall, canes cut to the ground. To anchor spring each winter in the soil of your mind bedded down in short days and bad light. For your loss and if you don’t look back, for their willing return, the prickly canes every which way the sun warms them, a slow sketch, lines first then shaded in. For the bucket you wear around your neck. For both hands free to sweep the green aside. The thump of the morning’s first. For the ripe and near ripe—a tug and the easy difference. For what they bear and will bear beyond you. For your table. For the robins’ theft. For the two neighbor girls who ask and your watching them reach, year after year, into the leaves. For their growth spurts and hair tied back. For their chatter as if today has nothing to do with tomorrow.