Labyrinth

Five times I paint the same image,
with variations: a horse
granting asylum to a boy.

You wear the clothes of a much larger man, clothes
that get larger by the day. By the hour.

The hay arrives — late for second cutting
but sweet and deeply, deeply green.

Across town, a man much older than you
sits with his book and two cats — his neck and shoulders
draped in a wrap his niece has made.

In the morning, five deer break from shelter
in the slough. Their white tails startle
the shorn soybean field.

A neighbor comes unbidden and unannounced
with a shovel and a sack of Quikrete
to reset the listing mail-box post.

You sit on a chair in the shower and let
the water run over you.

Starlings gather in the cottonwood, their brassy
Hitchcock chatter belying your vulnerability.
And your grace.

A woman dark inside her fringed hood
walks four big dogs and pushes
an aging Airedale in a stroller.

Before clearing out your refrigerator,
I stand in the shower and let
the water run over me.

The brick mason on his padded knees
celebrates the circumference of the labyrinth.
And its center.
We wheel you out to the end of the jetty, where
you throw a key into the ocean.

From the pillow, your voice rises
with intonations of some totem animal. We can tell
you’re singing — and join in.

In the belly of a pile of grass clippings and leaves,
compost begins to breathe.

Originally published in Twyckenham Notes