Home again, after three weeks down south.
Mason bees are bleeping and screeching
in a metallic dialect, building networks
of dirt tombs to store their stunned prey,
between volumes of Homer and Euripides.

From the far side of the valley comes the roar
of a motorcyclist winding through the gears
on a rural road, newly sealed with sticky bitumen.
The baby magpie has grown into a teenager.
A cool breeze is blowing the humid day away.

My son learns to dream in a tiny bedroom.
His brain is a word machine, working overtime.
Even while he sleeps, I hear his soft voice
sound the names of objects in his waking world.
He finds a grasp on language as I lose mine.

Dusk is written here in gradations of pink
and orange peeling back above arid pastures
where cows lay down like black boulders,
and a foundry glows in every farmhouse window.
See: that giant hand is hauling down the sun.