Hillwood

That winter we could hear the hillside breathing

below our bedroom window every night,

a heavy shaggy exhale with no inhale

as if a thing was breathing from its roots

and came to breathe the night away against

the outer clapboards, where in summer, wasps

came quavering with grass stem cargos to lodge.

It wasn’t a hive’s mind at work, but I’m not sure,

and it was winter and the hill leaned like a bear

and huffed, that’s right, huffed against the wall

right underneath our bedroom window until dawn.

We stopped noticing until it also stopped.

And there were nights when we turned out our lights

when the breathing did not start again; we waited

and fell asleep to each other’s resting breathing.

Too big to be a raccoon or a possum, but not

to be a doe in a safe place among the japonica.

And I have thought perhaps it was a sign

the mind gives of what’s to come in dreams,

this being a kind of vigilance. When it was gone,

we missed it but soon stopped missing or giving it

shape, that bear which never showed itself by day,

that coyote or pregnant doe or exhausted vagrant,

creatures of the night, so imaginable

that you wouldn’t want to find out what they were,

depriving you forever afterward

of that peace of mind you need when you drop off.