November hymnal (11)

The bare trees reveal mountains unseen in summer.
Leaves scrape across the road like the words

Of unseen translators looking for an original
Language to give a new season to. I can almost see

This poem assembling as I compose it, rising
In a pile where the wind ebbs and only you,

With a scar on your chest where each word
Thin and twirling on its stem left your branching

Pulse after negotiating the passage between light
And life, only you would stop to read it, unseen

By the neighbors bending to their black bags and rakes,
Your bare shoulders glowing as sun breaks through.

November hymnal (9)

The clouds are grazing on the hills of morning light
Waiting for it to get colder so they can become tigers

And bite everyone. For now they are just the shadow
Of the swishing tail. November, stop pacing.

You can’t pull us apart like a vulture on the road.
You’re not October’s thrill of departure but a cooling

Afterthought. You don’t see the sharp gloom of the departed
Who themselves don’t know they’re gone. Who are us all

Each to our someone who’s forgotten us. I tell myself
That nothing lasts, but I remember the first time I heard

You laugh, a prowling like a new word that could
Swallow this season whole and leave footprints in the snow

Still yet to fall, like those flowers that bloom in February
Or the dry shadow of a paper delivered in the rain.