It's birthday season
and the leaves are falling.

So it's kind of ironic.

Birth and death
in perfect harmony with one another.

Blossom all you'd like,
your leaves will turn
yellows and reds,

maybe sooner than you'd think.

All of the free spirits
are flying so high.
Happier than a child
on Christmas morning.

However,

the truth of the matter is
it'll all end

maybe sooner than you'd think

I had over prepared the event,
that much was ominous.
With middle-ageing care
I had laid out just the right books.
I had almost turned down the pages.

Beauty is so rare a thing.
So few drink of my fountain.

So much barren regret,
So many hours wasted!
And now I watch, from the window,
the rain, the wandering busses.

“Their little cosmos is shaken”—
the air is alive with that fact.
In their parts of the city
they are played on by diverse forces.
How do I know?
Oh, I know well enough.
For them there is something afoot.
As for me;
I had over-prepared the event—

Beauty is so rare a thing.
So few drink of my fountain.

Two friends: a breath of the forest…
Friends? Are people less friends
because one has just, at last, found them?
Twice they promised to come.

“Between the night and the morning?”
Beauty would drink of my mind.
Youth would awhile forget
my youth is gone from me.

(Speak up! You have danced so stiffly?
Someone admired your works,
And said so frankly.

“Did you talk like a fool,
The first night?
The second evening?”

“But they promised again:
‘To-morrow at tea-time’.”)

Now the third day is here—
no word from either;
No word from her nor him,
Only another man’s note:
“Dear Pound, I am leaving England.”

I am an open book for you to read
Just take a look at the pictures if you like
It's much too boring for you now
You've seen it a thousand times over
Occasionally I alter the colours
But it makes no difference
I want to tell a new story
To watch the light glisten in your eyes
Just one last time.

"good morning," you said,
as you walked up trottrottrot to my door,
opened the lock with your smile
& let yourself in:

"I promise not to stay,
but I'd like to at least take a glimpse
of the whatif sort of game we play."

& as I unfurled my joy at your arrival
I closed my eyes to picture
just what our whatifs and couldwes would look like:

there would be music,
sweet music,
& your voice would match with my words--
a tenor chorus in cummings' poetry,
a breath of anxious hearts' goodbyes.

for each&everytime; we are draw near to the same place,
we hold our hands up & against each other's,
& we look into each other's eyes
but our fingers never, never, never
interlace.

whatif, whatif, whatif--
so exhausting is this thought,
that I will set it free here in these words,
& I will let you be there with your wideawakeeyes
& your heart that runs its course in the other direction
from where I stand tonight.

a whisper—
it creeps through my extremities,
& it persists:
even when my fatherforgivemeforIhavesinned is clutched nearby,
like a slowburningcinder
that chisels at the arches of my feet,
& simmers in my lockedup[treasure]chest,
it tells me:
“iwonderwhenyouwilljustgivein,mylove,
giveintotheembersandbu­rstintoflames.”
[& these wrists, they ache,
with a promise they once held for me—
justopenthechestandyouwillbesetfree]
—

& I hate to be the bearerofbadnews but,
you are a part of it, as well,
my l.ong o.verdue v.icissitudinous e.scape,
& in your lapse of silence,
you whisper, too.
“iwonderwhenyouwilljustgivein,myfriend,
giveintotheembersof­yourheartache
andsquelchouttheselickingflames.”
—

& as the forest is left to its smolders
& as the smoke begins to clear,
I lie awake in
the lulling hours of the morning,
inspecting the charring on my heartstrings
& the scorched remnants of my exhausted energies,
waiting for healing to awaken
among the first few raindropsofremembers & sprigsofspring,
[itrustyou,itrustyou,itrustyou]
only to be engulfed in the rhythm of your illumination again,
for my leaves are dry
& the winds are strong,
& the hypnosis of your glow is too seductive to disregard.

tonight
you

are echoed in
the rhythm of
my solitary footsteps,

mirrored in the hazy glow
of street side lamps in
apathetic windows;

and I wonder if
you’ll ever know that
I see your reflection
in each puddle
of April rain

smothering
these lonely
cobblestone
streets.

through a menagerie of leaves

                  red

                                orange

                                                   yellow

against a deep blue sky, the moon a

                  bright

                                white

                                                  shadow


                                                                       I'm

                                                 falling

                                 for
        
                                                                  you

It was on a Tuesday—
empty-handed tree branches cringing beneath the
heaviness of a premature spring wind, and trying (failing) to
sprout fistfuls of leaf-paper poetry—proof to the world (and to themselves)
of something to say.

It was the season of in-between
and she was a letter scrawled by rememberings (and regrets),
unread and tucked into the envelope of an apathetic world. A girl
(a woman) left to linger and to steep in tea cups full of the steaming winter
and of loneliness.

And she walked through leftover
currents of wilted autumn leaves, now crumpled and disposed
onto the floor of a wintery Tuesday like (insufficient) pages, never to
be read. They lifted in the breeze to watch her and without really wanting to,
she understood.

For she was cringing, too,
beneath the (too-bright) light of a February sun that demanded
competence. She searched for it with frantic hands and found only
fistfuls of afraid and pockets full of words collected on heart-floors like
wilted autumn leaves.