Dampen

that winter after my father left the rain
wouldn't stop, soggy telephone poles

dropped their thin-fingered electrical
cables into our driveway,

but he had already taken the good car,
the Mazda, left us the pick-up

while the houses started to come undone,
tilting like insomniacs' tents,

overnight our neighbors' bungalow
collapsed and slid like a canoe

into the apple orchard where deer
picked through the mud,

their hooves sticking,
three species of algae speckling

the hair around their mouths
as their low heads tongued

the wormy flattened fruit;
they had already learned
to eat the damage themselves.