After “The Skunk” by Seamus Heaney

A poem. "Trying to find the balance"

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From bed we watch the blind light trace a fire of frost
across the windshield —
our Toyota Corolla burning so evenly in the driveway.

California is hot and cold / hot and cold
like trying to find the balance
that does not exist in the taps of a Motel 6 shower.

Morning parades into our room with its tail up.
From the pillow you ask:
Did something die in the kitchen?

I smell it too, I say, which is all you ever want from me:
acknowledgment of that invisible sense,
“the beautiful, useless tang…of absence.”

And on the lee side of the hill,
the cows are coal
waiting for the sun to ignite them.

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