A silence unhampered by wind.
Birds hovering at the feeder.
You do not move,
are afraid to move.
Everything has converged
to form a teetering balance.
If you move, or even breathe,
the birds fly away, the branches stir
as if shaken by a current of air.
So you don't move.
The birds eat at will.
The chair strains not to squeak beneath you.
You think the birds look at you,
but they are only looking for movement,
which you've sworn to yourself
you would not provide.                              

And then     (something)
                              slams into your life.
It doesn't make the birds flinch,
but inside you something new
has come to live,
where before there was
a space no one imagines is there,
at least not as easily as

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enough to fit your life in,
and the lives of all your friends.
your belongings: a bed, a table,
a television, even the books
were stacked and set inside,
and it was like you had just
laid the first brick of a wall
that until then you did not know
you were going to have to build.

The birds are feasting
and constantly on watch.
Nothing will fool them,
but this new event
has branded in you an unknown place,
and becomes the first thing
you store away there.
It is your aunt, dying.
You didn't know her that well.
This is the first thing.
There is a lot more space.
The birds will never end up there.
They are twitching ravenously.
They are risking their lives.
They have heads of statues.
They fly away in fear.
They have been through this before.

The Palms

there is a view. it is     paid for. it is     passe. it is just     there.
it is    nice to have. it is     not going anywhere. it is     behind the curtains.

A man pulls the curtain back
and his startled black eyes turn white--
sunlight enervated behind clouds.
It is almost unbearable to him.
But the palms reach right up:
pliant heads of large animals
looming over the house, the blinding view.
The man drops the curtains and vanishes.
The curtains, which were thick, dark,
heavy-hanging cloaks, transform
into white, translucent flaps of cotton.
They lift and fall in the breeze.
Then the walls of the house are gone,
and the roof, windows, and curtains.


the view was from the second story. it was     a vantage point.
it was     from up in the air. it was     no accident it resulted in consequences.

Needles cover the ground under junipers
dropping bluish-gray cones that roll
or stick in the muddy soil.
Cats stretch in thick ice plant leaves,
clouds peel themselves into streaks
blown to the eastern horizon.
Squirrels stop scampering to eat,
their eyes constantly shifting focus
as black crows circle palms overhead,
clutch brown, hardened fronds,
pick their way through to damp nests.
The crow is born in a dark, hidden place
that emerges in the luster of its wings.


the house is      not even a memory.  it is not            taken over.     
it is    replaced. it is     simply gone. it is     grown over by what was here before.

No particle of the house remains.
This is trees living. This is trees dying,
their resilience moldering into the ground.
This is nature growing over everything
even after it stops doing it with leaves.
This is not a suggestion of absence,
because even absence is about the self.
This is what it means to take yourself out.
This is what it means to take ourselves out.
This is not             about      anything.
It is cricketsong in the hours after light.
It is crows cursing all the other birds.
It is the smell of rain before it arrives.
It is wet, shaky palms flashing in wind.



_______________

1. Matt Costello teaches in the Rhetoric and Writing Studies Department at San Diego State University. His email is: Mc3athome@aol.com