Squirrels

Something blurred, warmed in the eye’s corner, like woodsmoke becoming tears; but when you turned to look the stoop was still, the pumpkin and tacky mum pot wouldn’t talk — just a rattle at the gutter and a sense of curtains, somewhere, pulled. Five of   them later, scarfing the oak’s black bole, laying a dream of snakes. Needy and reticent at once, these squirrels in charred November recall, in Virgil, what it is to feel: moods, half-moods, swarming, then darting loose; obscure hunches that refuse to speak, but still expect in some flash of   luck to be revealed. The less you try to notice them, the more they will know of  you.