TWO CROWS CAW in sycamore branches. Near twilight a red sky fades under broken branches. The television flickers its magic compelling death images. John Kerry promises to defeat G.W. Bush in the November election. And Hoa sits on a purple ball in the dark room. A black sun will pass us, and we'll absorb whatever it brings. The crows leave the lower branches. They play at the purple edges of blackness. I shit in a small room near a south wall. Our house is built on black clay, a chemistry of profound density. Water once flowed here, a great coast back in dinosaur days. Now near blackness the president talks on the radio. Haitian rebels promise to surrender their weapons.
Throw a black stone
deep in the night
for the old man to find
—finders keepers, they say—
unmasked scythe
swinging Time
Creep.
And the crows know what I don't, where to go when the stones blind us.