Where the rain stopped, a river of smoke like you said, bending to the valley. It is late afternoon. The sky’s clouds are steel, the maple closest to our cabin, branch red, the plum green, white. Further out is the smoke where the hawks made turns all week. I looked and looked for them, could only hear their calling for, one hawk trying to catch the other. Now, the bats. They like to swing round the red oak at dark, flip their wings closer until they recognize the echo of my face. They dive and circle like that buzzard I saw over my father’s field just above the bitterweed, their shadows making lines on the grass. This was just before the groundhog had his say. We were out putting in a gotten out cow. The buzzard’s wings flipped back fence high, turned at the wind like a kite I once carried into a field, me running, the kite climbing, catching, rope spinning off a branch burning my hands. It all vanishes into the air—the mosquitoes the bats don’t eat, February and this crazy warmth. We’re heading back into the promised cold.