Late last night while winding down after visiting with friends there was a loud knock on the door, or more like a rap.

n. 1 a quick, sharp knock or blow: there was a confident rap at the door.

It was the kind of loud that stands you up and recalls at once the other knocks you have had late at night, and one in the afternoon.

A confident rap at the door.

Recall, one woke us up at three or four in the morning and it had the feel of a warning against the door, to remain quiet and covered, knowing or believing that it was the sound of a friend whose status had changed, who changed, stolen or borrowed, clenching and unclenching for years.

n. 1 (also crystal meth) the drug methamphetamine.

One was a man who said It’s me and when I opened the door and did not know him at all the first thing I said was I am alone with my daughter, but that man had not knocked and so this does not really belong in the recall.

He climbed over the high fence,
in the morning out the window was a circle of bootprinted pond mud,
it had been a dark night and the whole yard fenced,
he would have had to climb another, wet

The one in the afternoon was two detectives wanting in who nodded and kneeled with balm for voices and other routines to soothe the fact of their sidearms. What I said before I stepped to let them in was I am alone.

When I stood up from the knock last night the first thing I said was I am not here. The lights were out when the police came in so they leaned in the kitchen dark by the sink to try for a view of our neighbour whose wife has just died. In the dark at the top of the stair with all the lights out and an ex-military man next door grieving himself into death my house is full.

tender and full and quiet and still with eyes and sights and raised rifles and blinds
and the quiet that follows and waits