A woman with light in her mind rests her chin
on the sill watching the wind fall like doves
to rest on the flowers in her beds. She wonders
about the language of rats, so he (being nearby) shows her
by rushing onto the lawn, drawing a brush out of his pack,
and with a “see here, please” raises the bristles to the air
to fill it heavy and thick. Dripping with sun, he cores
the centers so that light passes through and paints the lawn
with the outline of roses, verbena, and penta.
Out to the fence line, propagating like doilies at the feet
of the stones and trees, leaping leaf to leaf, and the grass
withdraws behind an invention of scatter webs
and when the wind flocks the shadows whisk
beneath the window and over the house like rag clouds
happy at tag. She says, “I didn’t know rats had such thoughts.”
The rat smiles, hides the brush away. The clouds quit the yard,
and the wind, called elsewhere, rises from the flowers like birds.
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