At Six

for Edward Hirsch Like a distant singing, like a finger sizzling for just one moment on the iron, it almost hurts. Almost. But then something pulls away, and the smooth belly of evening slides over the earth; the pines and the spaniels stop howling and suddenly drop off to sleep. While the air is numb with the drowsiness of clouds, the needle sails free of the scars on the record and the record player lifts its artificial arm! This hurts. But then a boy lays his cards on his bedspread the way a sailor spreads his sails on the sand, and even this reminds me of tables being set, of a woman calling and calling her children through blistered hands. Then something lets go, and in her left palm she sees her own eyes, and in her right the evening’s first star pulls her toward the distant singing of the sky. Then something else lets go; the long sheet of night winds slowly through the pines. Here and there the lights go up, like a shy applauding.