Noticing now how trees in twilight gather
closer, more in command than you know them to be,
snags the eye on advancing time foreshortened,
jostling topheavy into your modest plot.

As if a signal—could it have been the porchlight?—
beckoned them nearer in, a noose never yielding,
or as if twenty years’ growth had come
upon them in the blink of a wearying eye . . . .