Dear afternoon visitor, slipping
into the backyard of my mind, have a look-see

the sleek, silver fish leaping
into my luminous ethernet.  A shower

curtain’s eyelid, a cosmic veil. Here’s
a sharpened paradigm. Or here’s the shape
of grace: play dough pressed

into the fist of my 2-year-old son
standing on a chair at the dining room table.
~
Come song of evening. Come heaving
orange sun shrugged up over the treetops,
where the summer birds burst forth, little black

buckshot.
Here’s suppertime: an orange rind

curled up on the counter top, water roiling in a pot,
a hot, wet, whispering pan, an oscillating fan at dusk,

the hurt of day somehow mended.  And here is where
it all ended, out on the unfinished deck: a jet plane

heading west like a tiny white jewel scraping its nail
across the darkening blue sky.