The indifferent backdoor propped open.

Somewhere nearby tides empty the river,

 

fill it: honest pressures of the moon.

In a family, when something has been lost,

 

something new can be recruited to take its place.

The threshold, it almost demands action: look

 

toward the world, its temporary quality

of wholeness or else the parts into which

 

it is divided.  The frame it makes, that door,

year by year; a structure for seeing, a gap

 

in the curtain: stage and actors, the astonished

audience. In a family, the way sides are chosen:

 

if we were talking about the migration of birds,

we'd say the influence of the wind.