This August, understand
what never opens. You thought

you knew about blooming,
about ditches lavish

with daylilies. But these five
fused petals live

on refusal, clamped shut like a mailbox
hoarding its letters. Each year

the river shifts, the old spruce—tindery,
brittle—comes closer

to falling in. Still, there are days
you love it all, not knowing: the precise

line between woods and field, between
gold grass and pine-and-dimness—

and the way a hummingbird’s shadow
flickers on the table,

how something so small could tremble the light.