NIGHTFALL

Blink once & the gray fox standing on a stonepile at the edge of the woods is gone

Blink again & the trees disappear the soil & everything in it leaving the briefest of afterimages (say biomass say overburden)

Whatever’s left of the world gets swept up in the wings of a drumming grouse that cellar hole of sound that palpitation

As if some massive & resilient thing were suddenly let go from a great height rebounding each time a little less until what sounds like an acceleration

(nothing but the onrush of inertia)