Let’s visit my mother’s house,hers from the divorce, a plat of landin the shape of a bottom-widepoem. The front yard with itselongated driveway, its standof trees my father savedto give their bedroom privacy:this could be the first sectionof a poem, the line breaksedged, the sidewalk sweptof adverbs. The front porch lit,the door unlocked, would betoo quick a shortcut to the end,so let’s wander around the sideand into the backyard wherethe absence of moon encouragesthe darkness to rise from the dirt,the air ponderous enough to hide in.Here, the poem offers a deepening,something nudging from the depths,a pet trying to wake you from a dream.Let’s observe the windows of the house,the living room blazing, the tube-styleTV flashing. Let’s listen to the yelling,a deep, angry voice, drunk and suffering,and a woman screaming that the manhates his life, his family, then the soundof things breaking. We should be thankfulfor poetic concision. We can lingerin the early lines, for years maybe,breathing slowly, listeningto the breeze in the intricatecapillary limbs of the mesquite trees,putting off what we know will one dayneed to be done: returning to lightfrom the consolation of earth,going back into that houseto clean, catalogue, and forgive:an ending that no one, not even the poet,knows how to read.