Where we rested in green shade,
graveyard crickets like alien visitations,
now thunderstorms, rain marching slant
across a broad tin roof, drumming
in your head—no one stays to listen
now, always only passing through
not to pass the time. That smooth
water you bend down to—things
mysterious from a former life appear,
it feels suddenly as if we’ve forgotten
the use of simple tools or discovered
we have tails and wonder what to do
with them or with that instinct to
climb and hide instead of run. Alarm
thrills through you to think perhaps
that memory may be anticipation.
There’s that flat sky bearing down—
there we are out in the wide day
striding about upright like creatures
with no natural predators, or squat
on some beach idly drawing galaxies,
our first implements, sticks in sand.