Fall.
Run-down places are the nature of things
the decay that the gentrified smile of each city tries to cover up as trains move past them.
The empty strip mall, the mid-nowhere gas station, the vacant lots and bordered windows and all those hollow ruins for lease between the lights of the rented spaces we call home at night
So when you reply with silence as the answer I have no choice but to accept,
I think of an entire ghost town built on the sincerity of those run-down places where no one goes
And I go there, alone
not lonely,
if only to seek the company of the quiet truth that demands no explanation for why she left
or why I returned
to walk down each deserted lane from memory toward what I once called my hometown, my old stomping grounds
I ask if I am okay
with the absence and let the replies
come in echoes against the shell of my former house
carrying the sound of far-off ocean waves
maybe, a Rocky, sandless beach
in the Pacific Northwest
where we'll meet again someday
okay at last with the silence that comes from leaving everything behind and just going.

Rise.
Spring is you
reborn.
a re-learning of steps
needed to stand alone.
Spring is the water
from the sink that hits you between the eyes with the cold, hard fact that love dies
and you live on.
Spring is a face-off
with new realities
a rising to the ocassion as the weight of colder and darker days thaw off bent shoulders under the cleanse of April's first shower.
Spring is baptism.
Your re-newed steps pound the same pavement like falling petals this time around
And you remember, finally,
That you loves you
And you're forgiven when you did not.
You remember where it was you were going today
Spring is hello, good morning
Let's go for a coffee and talk
about what we dreamed
until we wake up
early enough to greet the brightness ahead.