The clouds draw in.
Wood thrushes begin
their evening songs at noon.

Long feathers of rain
on the breeze—a plumage
the exact color of the world.

This ends the series. Thanks for reading.

the sun doesn’t stand a chance.
Already it’s staging a sunset
on the back of my neck

as I crouch down
to puzzle over the maze of roads
on a yellow morel.

like prayer beads,
and later, when a black snake
rears up like an instant tree,

I remember all
the deadly false Edens,
the acres of glass.

Down below, the scars
of old, knife-cut graffiti:
Smoke Up. Fly High. Manson Lives.

A warbler in the crown
of a neighboring oak,
its shadow crossing my face.

or see right at his feet
the crowds of violets fluttering
under the attention of the rain?

A warbler just back from the tropics
sings quietly, as if trying to locate
all the notes.

I follow a vole’s progress
by watching where the grass trembles—
until a breeze springs up.

How the weasel must hate the wind!
And how it must strive to sound
exactly like it.

From the valley, the sound
of horses pulling a buggy
in their eight steel shoes.

The crooked sassafras—
something has found under its bark
a blood-colored door.

I nudge the intact wall
with the point of my umbrella.
It’s all out of smoke.

Ovenbirds and the black morel,
writes a friend.
Impossible to see.

A birch log collapses
when I step on it, but the bark
arches back after I pass.

New ferns uncoil,
heads slowly dissolving
into spine and ribs.

Below, the ugly subdivision
where a black family once woke
to a burning cross.

I find a shed antler on the powerline,
a twisted Y like the bottom half
of a stick figure.