Like this, he said, and we watched him reach for yet another fistful

of straw and scatter it, filling those patches where the grass hadn’t grown

in enough. One half of me kept wanting to imagine him covering some 

shame by now unacknowledged because barely

 felt anymore, though 

understood, instinctively, as never too far away; the other half

kept still. Think of it like camouflage, he continued, People think camo, 

 they think it’s all about hunting. It ain’t. It’s about

 not being seen. Just

beyond him, ravens staring down the field in general for any stray

particulars seemed to wait for any of us to contradict him. No one did.

In the dream, it’s another time,

earlier in history, you can sleep outside

in the open country and wake as you fell asleep, untouched, nothing

missing, whatever sorrow or happiness as unchanged as the lake’s face

on a day without wind—

but this wasn’t that dream. You got something 

 to say about it, he said, looking vaguely toward all of us, then straight

at me. If there was to be any kind of tenderness here, this much

I could tell: it would have to start with tenderness. I mean the word itself.