October 19
I am the baby whose first word was a laugh.
At fifty years old my heart grew by half.
October 19 [Book of Shadows]
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Category Archives: Book of October
October 18 [Book of October]
October 18
People will be watching.
Be careful how you love —
It may cause an unsafe drop in
Side effects. A special election
Edition that will last right up
Until we are all dead and
Changing the subject.
(That never happened.)
Outside the polling place
Of the soul they stand,
The watchers. The monitors
Who do not believe in us,
We are so invisible to them
We can walk past them.
Their eyelids only snap open
When they hear the hand
On the lever.
October 17 [Book of October]
October 17
The morning moon, bright with wanting to stay,
On one side of the sky. On the other
The horizon whitens ahead of the sun.
Directly above, darkness. A few stars.
Only the middle of their journey visible.
Fall enters my heart. Camelback crickets
Finding their way into an old house
Still busking their song so well after its season.
October 16 [Book of October]
October 16
The moon past its most visible fullness
Is still whole. Is it the moon that counts
Or the light it sheds? Is the hidden whole
Here for us at all?
October 15 [Book of October]
October 15
The western sky’s white but the tiny star’s white’s
Brighter. The bleached day’s bones left for parts west.
On the sky’s other side the hunter’s moon uncrouches
and coughs. It shines off every tin roof of every hundred
Year old house but does not compare to the silent
Ocean of mid-day’s leaf shadows on the back yard’s
Softly swaying grass I saw earlier, so perfect
I pulled a chair off the porch and sat in the midst
Of its going-nowhere motion until I felt the day’s
Balance point precisely: all things moving, everything still.
October 14 [Book of October]
October 14
All summer long their message was obscured
By texture. The leaves grew on thin stems
And below them from the ground grew
Their brothers the shadows. The leaves
Shook in the breeze, pattered with rain,
Danced in storms. Their brothers
Made the long journey across the park
Each day, dawn to dusk they made
The same one-way trek.
They were pacing but we didn’t know
Because they came back in the dark.
The leaves are falling now and blowing
Away, taking their shadows with them.
Across the grass and moss of this tide
Of hills, root and acorn abound and
Broken branch underfoot, it’s like the trees
Finally found a single letter for what
They wanted to say and a word
Can finally be seen inscribed
On the browning ground in the trunks’
Long shadows. I’m going to lean into
The hills and the sun’s cold shoulder
And read my future as I walk into it,
As I give it all gravity’s got.
October 13 [Book of October]
October 13
The ants, which carry everything away
Will not approach the mantis on my steps.
They drift away like metal filings
From the wrong pole of death’s magnet.
They will carry everything away
But not this green stillness.
It is no less patient in emptiness.
It does not have the posture
Of dead things ready for the ground
To reclaim it. Nothing with wings
Descends to dissemble it.
Its power, like a prayer flag,
Is as a vessel separate
From intention. I leave it on the step
And walk, as the needs of the day
Assemble like ants around me.
October 12 [Book of October]
October 12
For a while yet the walnuts
Will drop to the earth at night
Like exclamations about what
We forgot to do and now
It’s too late to do anything
But remember. Then
Next week a wind in the maple
Will turn the sky to stained glass
As what’s forgotten again
Again takes root
October 11 [Book of October]
October 11
Two nights ago I dreamed of this day:
Sitting up in bed suddenly, eyes
On the clock reading 10:11, although
I had gone to bed after midnight–
Too dark to be mid-morning (and impossible
To sleep through a day in my home)
In my dream I lay back down and slept
Dreamless inside a dream of sleep
Walking through town the next afternoon
The dream came back to me
And I understood
10:11 was a date, not a time
So I waited
Until today but nothing happened
Still something arrived
Like the absence of a body in
A favorite t-shirt maybe that was
What the dream was about
October 10 [Book of October]
October 10
The invisible tribe sweeps through the sleepers
And for that moment their dreams lay in their hands
Like musical instruments.Who will you wake with it?
Of course your dream was never alive;
The hole you thought was a mortal wound–
Place your mouth there and
A note carries through the night, brushes
The underbellies of leaves and reaches those
Who travel without being heard. Some will
Stop, and look down at the nautilus in their hands
They only now remember carrying, they will put
It to their ears, and hear the same sound,
And while the invisible tribe slips away,
begin moving silently your way against their new shadows.
Translations from the English 