When thrips attacked the privet
a couple-three summers ago, the leaves
turned dry gray-dusted green, like old hands
speckled with spots of brown.
We tried a bunch of cures,
and, when Aprils came, each leaf
a spanking hunter-green, wondered:
                         did we matter much?
Or were these bursts of seeming health—
by fall, each fall, the spots got worse—
                         what dying privets do?

Climbing my rickety ladder this fall,
leaning into the privet to prune,
I wedged a foot into its crotch;
the ladder wobbled, I straddled a limb.
The house, streaked in shadows
of late afternoon, looked about
to gobble me up, baring in anger
its rafter teeth, decayed themselves
by weather, and split—we’re ignorant
and afraid. A man needs worlds
in parallel, eternities to sift them through,

and then a life. What we get
each April, world, is you.