And what held the balance of lives, ivy swindling
  through branches, stains removed from
  walls in record time, dust veils swept under
  bookshelves. Trees unnamed. Ants are

  heavy this year. What again was I doing
  with my days? Arrange bundles, stack cans,
  drag my nails across a quarter’s circumference,
  this furious caution binding joy to vision, twice

  unmarrowed from contained loneliness. It is,
  perhaps, for the best that the failure of language
  ruptures inward, a rivet of clay melting eddies
  of foam and grain. There are essentials, but

  I never reach them, insisting on civil thanks that
  are not generosity but desperation split in three
  halves. Portioning restraint into poised slivers of need.
  Off the hillside, hushed into the brevity of mountains.