The Minimal Passage

Those days, the kids returned from college,
I drove to the foundry and back,
our routines forming like wet brushwork
or fretwork, hidden in fingers then visible.

First thing one morning,
a rattling in the chain link,
hard to see just where, past the weeds
swirled on the far side of the cooling
swimming pool.

What, I thought, is strong enough
to shake all day?
The ravens aren't confined to the garden;
the squirrels too lank and wily.
But it's guesswork, the mind
outside the body.

Later, last in the evening,
I had to pull a dead rabbit
backwards out of a link loop.

Vincent Van Gogh gave the maid
Gabrielle Berlatier his severed ear,
a space too small to escape through,
shake as he might the whole fence.