…I’d see things no one else could see…
            Stanley Plumly, “Brownfields”

All night the Luna Moth had circled the flickering
street light as if it were paying homage
to its own brief flash of life
while above, the moon itself seemed to waver

behind clouds of voile. You would have noticed,
then, the sudden sun’s alarm lift a blanket
of crows from the Live Oak,
felt the air thicken, the wind start to tear the light

in the tree, the first pigeons confused to mumble
their philosophies, the mud daubers just
emerging from their tunnels
under the wilting side of the shed’s roof, the screech

hawk warning, as if he too could smell the rain
still far off where your clouds are testing
their shadows on the hillside.
What you wanted was the world we see, even though

the world we see is not the world we see, only
our memory in its imagining. It is not
the red and green screen shot
of the approaching storm on the cell phone,

a chameleon snake about the width of a county,
running north-south, shifting colors–
red, yellow, green,
almost autumnal, you’d say, sidling this way

with its future that may bring toppled trees and poles,
branches piecing the sides of the shed
like lances or battle axes,
enough of a metaphor to start picturing the man

sitting beside that shed in his fabric couch carried
from some distant, unknown place
by the storm, him holding
a birdcage, its two lovebirds singing anyway,

his own life scattered for miles, merging with other
missing lives, letters, bills, pictures,
families, what is beyond
this screen picture we save, as clear as the storm’s snake,

though nothing tells us of the storm inside him,
nor in us watching, not understanding
what he feels, only
understanding that each breath we take we take with love.