Iridescent flies are writhing on the driveway.
We set up our chairs to watch, while the crows,
in uneasy groups of three, keep up their guttural
mutterings in the cedar. Who hasn’t reached a point
when they don’t care who’s watching, and aired
the open folds? The system is swinging north.
 
It will miss us, sprinkling only a spell of restless
sleep, our minds not free of the idea of it: People
are standing on the land by the lake, shouting
to the people in their boats in the lake about what
they can’t see behind them. The children ask why
the ride home seems shorter. The unexpected, too,
 
unfolds slowly. Who hasn’t missed what they weren’t 
looking for, and petted the Black Widow’s eggs 
tacked up to the underside of a chair? Falling faces, 
such things have been creeping up on you. 
The system is red in the center, undulating in and out 
of an oval as the animation tracks it north. Men keep 
 
their collections in the basement, in the lower-level 
sheds, the ever-dank relegations most prone to flood. 
So taken are they with anger and love, the crows skip 
their ritual proclamations on being spared the storm. 
The driveway flies are spent and they blink, dissolving 
the mist into the salty southern edges of their eyes.