The Best in Contemporary Literature

    from The Importance of Elsewhere:

                Earshot

The contrail eddies and bends its back,

then opens its fist and spiders

into a noiseless dot. The missile

we never saw thrusts toward Utah,

its dummy warhead punching holes

in blue September’s clouds. Tracing its

     climb

with a finger, we watch the sky open,

then clot close behind.

                                  When we hiked

the canyon wash that day, your dog

     spooked

rabbits, dozens, from their pm shade. Then

     the rain

erased her tracks and ours.

                                       What we want,

we say, is a warning shot, thunder beating light

down the arroyo in time for us to hear what comes.

But what hides best is sound--the crack of the bullet

is never first to reach the heart. Like the picture tube

dissolving in the quicksand of itself, it goes deaf

before blind.

                    Dumb instrument, the tongue’s

too subtle a thing; it means to report

what someone needs to hear but always arrives late,

just as something lovely has gone out of sight,

leaving it to stammer in the rinsing rain,