This pine fence comes alive again
with the early winter rain:
bright lichen-whorls trace the grain
around a blackeyed knot and moss
preens its glossy coat on the fencetop,
as if both had been waiting through a summer
loud with jays and the tilting hawk,
through a fall baked and forgetful –
diminished almost to nothing, unless
you stopped to finger the boards
along their furred tops, or slide
your palm across those rough patches
just lighter than the bleached-out wood –
waiting, with no sign for relief
half a year away, as if clouds had been 
banked all summer in a crystal northwest
and would roll in by nightfall after all –
waiting, as I never wait, from one breath
into the season of the next.