for Cody

An oppressive heat, the air still and hot as an oven, and the distant mountains, the lake, the hummingbirds buzzing around the railing, and the railing itself have become as flat as a painting. The sunset striped and gridded, a pixel vision of evening. In the horizontal light, familiar faces blur uncertain, hang slack or twist unexpected like the grain in a piece of wood. Eyes are everywhere, in the curl of a breathing fern, in the pulse of a watching cactus, in the open beak of a hovering bird.

Nighttime, stars stir unsettled through the bronchial branches of a juniper tree, an amber shape that might be a cat crouched atop a wooden fence. Numb inside the gate we weigh it with our eyes, count the limbs, count the tails, count them again as the numbers run away. Is it known? Is it knowable? A dog, five eyes arranged in an arc, wary beside us, fur aglow in the darkness.

Later still, and earlier, time slipping between our fingers, boundaries blur and bleed, ink leeching into paper, into chairs, into the deck of splintered wood, into the glass we struggle to raise to our lips, the cigarette pack we cannot reach. In the darkness, the click of a plastic lighter, the shock of recognition, the distant song of frogs.