Is Light

Subtracted,

Or darkness added,

As the garden sinks down

Under

The spell of

Hooded women murmuring in the

Quiet

And sometimes stooping

With a troubled look as

If

Searching for some

Trace of a finch lost

Seventy

Years ago, when

They were girls? Is sanity

Created

In the arms

Of hope? Or is the

Uninterrupted

Shadow under the

Hosta multiplied from leaf to

Leaf

Till the rose

Canes snarled along the top

Of

The fence resemble

Amateur watercolors of the trenches,

Those

Expressionistic ones veterans

Painted, with elongated faces splotched

Brownish

Green, and coils

Of barbed wire scrawled like

Magnified

Spiders' legs everywhere?

But now, even the most

Vanishingly

Small ramifications of

The nearby trees are painted

In

With isolated strokes

Of a single sable hair

Weighted

With paint; the

Rest are invisible. Is light