IN INDIANA dogwood holds out its hands palms upward on the fingertips bright red berries are shining the cedar keeps a green secret of perfume for its dead branches to evade corruption the sumac tops itself with flames that slowly darken into hard nuts we have forgotten to eat I wait for the hour that opens your eyes the minute my call can go the wires that unite the Midwest its prairies its remnants of forest its recollections of glaciers and oceans your child is busy all her friends have become invisible and penetrate the walls of vast fields of apartments and still heart aches with loneliness arms enclose an emptiness without a shape my weather comes inside for a rest and the rocker leans back of its own accord when this stretch of time is complete all the words we have been gathering all our lives will burst into scores our fingers penetrate like music and fish will rise from stones at the roots of dogwood cedar sumac