In the middle of December,
something rings
in the corn, the bull’s eye
of campus, in a blue light
that is three-quarters
at best,
tracks me like a sister
into a world of developing
bells. Husks
pull closed over dying meat.
A dusky tongue gongs
the lips of liberty
and Andromeda is pushed
to the sky’s orange rim.
The barntops hide
from the roofs of libraries
and labs, inhabit this season
with humble angles
acute against the night
and the things that sleep
in it. In St. Joseph,
a television is turned off,
a bed goes dark.
In Mahomet, a woman checks
to see if a window is closed
because how can this house
be so drafty? Her feet drag
slowly across the carpet
gathering enough electricity
to fill a glass with warm water
from the tap, the faucet
closing like a curtain
in a hospital where
so many babies, just today
were born. Somewhere—
Tuscola, maybe—we all
reach an age when we stop
crying over trivial things
and words, where blessings
fall to asphalt and melt.
Under the cornfield,
the Boneyard Creek
hatches its fish in secret,
waiting for the philanthropist
moon to lift
its water up.
