by Kevin Cantwell

    The held cry of a hawk¹ makes Thomas Hardy² think

    to make her believe it's a newborn's cry she hears.

    Milk wets through her blouse. The other women know

    at once. That's chapter one. How it starts

    to grow while above his head the cumuli

    accumulate. The August fields waver beyond

    the privet hedge. He's given up the novel

    for poetry. The women look at each other.

    One counts out change on a plank³ counter.

    That's that she says. Then exposition's drift

    to flashback： How a horseshoe loosens；

    how when leading the horse the master returns.

    Not angry， only to get it done right.

    How she presses under the eaves of the shed

    with him while the afternoon rain comes down

    so hard they are nearly soaked anyway.

    The editorial omniscient⁴ bites his tongue.

    Innocent as it goes. The scent⁵ of windfall

    rises up through the apple tree from the ground.

    Some of the leaves bronze even now. There's no

    turning back but that's getting ahead of ourselves.

    There's Hardy. Shoes a disgrace. Canvas gaiters

    undone⁶ and one foot on top of the ladder

    where it narrows at the highest rung， the worn wood

    twice the width of a stirrup， and one foot

    in the crotch of a limb. He has it all

    worked out. She's in another country where rumor's made

    a place for her. Where's the little one？

    they ask， but she presses past them into the lane，

    It serves her right but no one says it

    so that she hears. A limb tumbles through the green

    cloud of foliage⁷. And then another. He cuts it back

    to make it bear， though a neighbor's stopped to tell him

    it's ill-advised so late in the season.

    She finds a place for herself as a domestic

    until the governor says a girl's come back.

    They'll have to let her go. It's dusk. The clouds

    go pink to shell. He folds the little saw.

    The ladder widens to its base， A trick of perspective

    also that lures⁸ the gopher into the wooden box

    he's set in its tunnel， the hole which looks

    like an exit， the end of the tunnel， daylight，

    but smaller than its head and those footsteps

    on the earth above， which pause and anticipate

    her every turn， and block her escape

    with a garden fork plunged⁹ into the lyric¹⁰ dark.

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