Birds fly south, a saw
yells through the woods.
Night is coming, water
chirrs in the stream.
I want to be an animal
between one sound
and another. At evening
I come to a river, the reeds
like the dark in my own skull.
I want to sleep, to be still
away from the villages,
night is coming.
Image of bird in the sky,
image of leaf, shadow on shadow.
Darkness begins in the trees
and the tight maize-heads.
Burrowed out of the owl’s look
I dream the shush of grass
in the night fields, sleeping.