Synoptic

Sun one way, and in the other two magpies
stretch violet between them. Barbed wire is provoked
to sparks. The road catches the dark
which unravels up the mountain. This is
the twilight I’ve always wanted.

But a husband is yelling. His wife
inflates in a doorway, her gesture like a fist
spilling flour. There is the moment
when anger is all sound, all color.
And I can’t resist lurching toward

the heavy wash of it, watching it spin
like the needle across the spiked rose
of an old compass, one direction only slightly larger
than the other. He turns to the car door,
she probably to the cleaver, the rolling pin, a black

pan deep with grease. All the while the sky
is still falling into consonants torn
from the throat. It’s what my father taught me,
the husband’s motion says. It’s what your father does,
hers reply, while the magpies move

their colors elsewhere. He drives off, she
shuts the door. The end like a cloth
graying on a post. I put my camera away.
By now he is most likely half-way to loss,
she, all the way back