Even when
All is said and done,
And I have become
A guardian angel
Over my past self,
Even then,
I have failed.

Autumn is a Greek sea,
A summation of wet leaves,
Gathered wicks of sunset,
A hypocaust of warm water,
That lies beneath our feet,
Incense from the Sea of Crete,
Risen to the airy suggestive.

Autumn is a word in the mind, fallen leaf-like to the mouth,
How like the orange rind, our ancient past is shriveled under pillars.

So Herodotus muttered marble dust into his beard,
And foretold the white clay of the mule road,
And the whiskers of Greece grew long with legend.

There is in sadness a sense of Fall, of spacious leprosy where crippled thought like the outmoded nymph dies behind each tree, and childlike peeks out to let at least childhood disbelieve in its unhappy end.
     There is in sadness, a branch that holds the once-upons, the happily-evers, and the destined-to-bes, a sweet find for all in grief.  Each stem lends momentum to their pluckings.
          There is in sadness, a young man who cherishes dead leaves.  He lately held waxen happiness and knew this as his permanence.

A sigh is a barebacked rider, soundless along a sandy coast,
A candle tipped with starlight, wheeling in a cosmos of smoke,  
A firefly floating on the ruins of the wind like a winged gyroscope,
A skull in the stomach whose teeth are my own and breathes
With Babel’s thousand tongues telling fragrant untruths.

So falls Greece, so falls Rome,
And in their bone-lipped tombs
Forever those still listening for love.

Winter is the cold sleeping space
Between the blanket and the sky,
Between the legs falling asleep in warmth,
And the leaves turned to frost in twilight.