Through the glass: July. Bright, teeming, the dead
middle of the thing, leaves so charged they flicker.
No bruisy wintry blues now, just a lawn edged

with shadows, and that little yellow shimmer
can’t be fall yet—only blight along the border
of the green. So we tell ourselves. Picture

me at the kitchen window, looking over
all we’ve tended. Seething, urgent green. The kind
that says today, green of arbors, ardors,

malignant green, frantic with now. You’ve called
to tell me no, they didn’t find the gene
in your bloodwork, the one that might forestall

the tumor’s growth, explain its lineage—might mean
history, might mean future. Just a little
accident of nature. Your voice is reeling

between laugh and car crash, a throaty middle.
Across the yard, years ago, a thick branch fell,
snagged in the armpit of the old maple

on its way down. It’s still there, balanced, swelled
with moss and moths and little buds, tender
shoots taking root in decay. As though the knell

of thunder or God—whatever rendered
it broken—could just be undone. As though
that maple were enough, those arms as slender

and fissured as any body. Noon. Shadows
in the grass are shrinking, the phone cord’s caught
and tangled in my hand; later, slowly,

daily, we will stretch them back out. Once, we thought
we’d know when it was time for life to shake
us down. The difference between growth and rot.

The clarity of falling, its vibrant stake
in gravity, that suck into earth’s keen
and hungry mouth. And yet it hangs there. Raked

and raw and rootless as any in-between,
as violent in its brightness, its ruthless green.