IN THE GARDEN

6 5 R I N T H E G A R D E N K A R L K I R C H W E Y So at last it ends, a week of sweltering weather. Dinner with our friends on the patio, and in the gathering dusk, arcs of glittering water as children prance and slither across the lawn. One child trains the hose on my eleven-year-old daughter as she careens toward me, her body steeply angled against gravity, her hair a single fall, and the look on her face – Goldfinches carom o√ through the wisteria arbor in a triune epiphany; fireflies startle up, fleeing like rounds of tracer in movies I have seen, 6 6 K I R C H W E Y Y and in the moment’s space her joy should occupy, what comes to mind instead is a photograph in which a naked girl, her clothes burned o√ by napalm, runs down a country road, G.I.s walking behind her. I cannot hear her scream. ...