I watched Preacher Benson plowing his back garden with a mule
to the sprung clacking of the screen door,
and it’ll sound that way when the century turns.

As a child I would awaken,
midsummer, cicadas buzzing
their alarm from oak trees whose

The flower pod, green-white, hand sized,
bloomed at night. As the dead increased,
the world of objects seemed more dense,

Collect and recollect. These things I do
within, where, present with me is the world
and whatever I could think of it,

Days and nights of the most and largest changes
in her tenth year. Absolute time had always been near,
but in that year it entered her seemingly