THE DEAD PULL US TOWARD WINTER

Her face with its scar, his with its

Childish American smile, are calling from December,

Always there behind the ragged summer bush, the

magnolia with its last browning flower,

The dandelion heads spilt like gnats across the pond,

The grass hard as pine needles.

Years of other Augusts have all ended the same way:

We spread our arms at the sky like statues of

' Some discoverer, the sun pounds on us, the day is blue;

Where do we feel that doubt-(not in the ankles, the

hollows under the ears)-

Their winter faces trying to be born again.

Without them the year would be hot pale summer,

The evening crickets so dense we'd feel our way along

their clamor,

Sky streaked with sunset half the creaking night.

But his face and her face with their tan tightened skin

and their eyes sewed shut. . .

Even in the height of summer

Their true world, clenched into itself

Draws our hot aimless days down and home.