Tonight I hear machines at their dark work in the dark, I understand 
the sound they make among the gaps between the trees 
to mean: someone is building, something is being built, a man 
tilts at his deadline with no moon tonight to show him how. My son 

lies sleeping apostrophic in his bed, one month gone by since 
I first trimmed his hair, those fine gossamer follicles falling, leaflike, 
like the inflection of the one declarative command: change. I take 
myself out. Not far-off, not near, the earth-grinders make 

their voices heard like drag-harrows behind them. The physical world 
contains an inexhaustible supply of metaphor, I tell myself 
again; I tell everyone. They listen. They listen like I listen 
to the mind’s interrogative, landscape’s imperatives, night’s