A lantern brought from the sky in the girl's hand on the road at night and a pail half full with earthworms inching and flipping around a shovel, always rain passed from cloud to gulch, the great absorption, the fleeting visited upon the many, always the stilled air lying its calm, a mint leaf chewed in crags of teeth, mud slopped across her boots, always the wolf pricking its ears before placing its eye on the form, always two scrawny wrists over lantern and pail, swinging wrists of wonder, always magnificent breath halted bellydeep in the waist, always a halt in the wolf before bolting, always the mange patterned on the figure, always a vast light held up to fields, the wolf's trot retreating into weeds that stand like toothpicks, like shadows, like black-tipped needle-knives.