This godforsaken place has moods
Just like the people who people it do.

In summer the lush verge of the yard reknits
and we rejoice: the neighbors disappear for three whole months.

Our bower tucks in close, sews us warm and safe
inside the pocket of love’s apron, the hedgerow rife

with fruit and bloom and buzz – only, the right kind,
the kind that speaks the language of our own mind.

Or so we imagine: hear in the bird’s calls our own
tongue, cadence, parlance, cry and coo, in the overgrown

serpentining rose. At noon our shadows puddle in a pool
around our feet: we’re columns of light, but the cool

of the edge always waits, its deep dusk of shade,
for later, for those dark hours after the sun recedes