and looks out to where the woods begin,
snaps her fingers.
In truth
it was a cloud
shifting in the sky,
and not a sign:
a cloud above them, gray,
with flares of lightning as
a sapphire-hummingbird flitted close
and she
had better pull some weeds, she says,
stack kindling by the garden, she thinks,
love the dark houses that the hillsides are,
the bones that bear exactly what
the night bears.