Without Veil

Late sun brick heat cooking in back of me,

and far over the tree line to the West, a steeplecross

melts into the coyote purple, and no geese fly.

Grass leaves rise up, sun-battered into brown,

and ants make circles into sense as the mountain

haze over the steeplecross is only shadow and cloud,

and sparrow-wet wind comes up dry over the land,

loosing its longmuscle through the grass leaves

and tight weeds. My shirt pressed up against me,

and the brick heat downsoftening in coyote time:

all things grow tense; the nightdown breaks the shroud,

all things revealed, like the other side of a coin—

a loose shirt tightwraps the body it covers in the nightwind

but darkness goes out so none can see, like the other side

of a coin, and soon there is no mountain, standing shaped

against coyote time, and the steeplecross is gone,

and no geese are heard dragging sound across darkness.

And drywind softens as the tight weeds slack up,

and all things are still and without fate.

Before the arm of the stars, wheelminds are scattered

in the brush, and cats rustle out of thickets,

but nearby, the trackrattle upstarts, slowbreaking the night

lens, and a soundveil comes down in brush as all things knot

up in discovery, and light starblots the sky out.

Dayshroud comes back up, cracking on as trackrattle

comes up slowgoing, and the dayshroud goes along—

the soundveil snuffs out; the eternal arm of the stars returns

to scatter the wheelminds. And the last cat in the thicket

doesn’t move. She watches a toad shake noise off the coin

in the time without veil, when mystery is renewed, watching

when sounds and lights and trackrattles are gone in the night,

and the veil is taken up by the arm of the stars,

and things are as they are

when they’re watched.