Things that Happen Only if You Watch

A thin maple sprig
keeps bumping against
the package of night
closing like a fist
around it and refuses
to give in.

Loam, the rich nacre
of Earth, bottomland
in an axial thrust,
shoves against a mole
until the mole is
ingested.

A grain of sand,
stretching itself,
drives the ocean
back, back, always
back, against the moon
and quahogs.

The green escalator
of a field, dizzily,
frantically late,
throws its goal line
toward my son's feet
in bedlam.

In summer a Bartlett pear,
yellow and freckled ripe,
skins itself on the teeth
of an old man immobilizing
a park bench.

The Earth, trying
to get away, drives
its volume into my eyes.
The corneas explode
at impact.