At dusk the crows crowd in, black clouds swarming to beeches stripped of leaves above a creek nearly drained by summer’s heat. A pickup with a farmer and his son pulls up beside me. Some cattle got out of their pen, but, except for one lone calf still loose, the others followed the lowing home.
The radio reported this morning that in our lifetime Mars will never be so bright again. I wade through wild asparagus, spiny cucumber, and milkweed pods and with binoculars usually aimed at mud-grinding carp or slithery deer, look at the moon. Then move down, and right, the radio said. There.
***
A penlight probes my optic nerve. The doctor tells me retinas can detach in glaucoma eyes like mine. Why can’t I be a Dylan Thomas raging at the night? Instead, I sit passively, fitted for new glasses, listening to lenses click clear, clearer, clearest, heavy on my nose.
***
A black box elder bug crawls over the first black lines of a fountain pen poem. Deer loiter at the salt lick. The farmer calls to tell me the stray has not come home. He says if I see him to keep him close; he’ll scare too easily to lead back home alone.
Through open windows I hear the cattle low, frightened at being penned. The birch sapling transplanted from Wisconsin spreads smoky branches up through the oak that ants are hollowing out, its bare, skeletal limbs entangling Mars, its life three minutes past.
