Scavengers
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When the racoons came
to the kitchen window, which was open
and through which they stole 2 new
loaves of bread, we wanted
to open it again
and give up our cantaloupe, bananas,
the last green apple
in the blue ceramic bowl.

The creek runs in the moonlight like a narrow escape.
On the rocks the coons had sat
and washed the bread, each bit
of crust torn off and dipped
in the water, turned till every pore soaked through
and the sopping bread was clean enough
to fill their mouths like fish, like bread
washed clean of our hands.

The porchlight swings in the east-going wind
which calls out sometimes in its sleep. If I could be
a body newly risen, washed clean, I’d empty the archives
of white nightgowns hanging from curtain rods all over my room.
One night I woke up and forgot what they were. It was almost
a vision. I would take them down
to the river—a long way?—and send them floating,
boats of dogwood, into darker water
where the roots of trees drink green
wet light and everything returns.

Behind my house the steeples
of Delphinium stay open all night.
Who doesn’t know the purple larkspur?
Devil’s trumpet, lark’s claw, lark’s heel—