Tin cans rolling across the patio
wake me. Creeping downstairs I make a plan—
fling open the door to scare the racoons

You can tell by the way the sky
has turned rose and the blue houses
have begun to open their eyes,

The light sifts down from the naked bulb
he’s quickened with a string. He speaks
to no one out of the well of his anger.

The air is measurable. Clocks
bell, publishing hour on hour
each other’s truth, one two, three four:

My voice bends over your neck.
There, to the small of the back
mouth mutes its touch.

For him it is always a Shabbat
of words. Fire is forbidden:
even the memory of ashes.

Gunnery practise dubs the Judean hills.
Anna Ticho stopped painting for many years.
Her eyes a still small voice, eroded

“So this is it, experience,” I thought,
lugging tin buckets from the ice machines
to rooms of real adults, with cigarettes

Hudsons and Studebakers ruled the streets,
a crossing guard and teenagers the pavement
when I was eight. But that was an improvement

The panic grass is pushing up
serenity into an air
that has at last regained its pale.