The house is god of the suburban street,

allowing nature play under strict law.

The trees with clipped limbs screen neighbors.

Shorn azaleas fawn the vinyl siding

with color and line like favor done a fief lord,

all standing thin-legged in bored soil

bordering the carpet of cowering fescue—

dormant meadow deflowered by the mower’s blade.

Let me return to the cabin in the woods,

small and swallowed in a ring of wild-headed alder

shaking out violent twig-fall upon

the trembling roof; bleeding heart closes in

on all sides like high tide under the flag

of unfurling ferns and the shout of the pine siskin!

There I will glimpse You, glinting in deep shadow,

sprinting in flashes on the aching periphery of vision.