Your little eyes, they recall the words of broken hands
the secret that makes a mouth beautiful under the red air
A boy, feeling gold, reaches with garden fingers
to touch a good dark woman, her throat opening.

The Ancient Wolf cries, "November!"
and the city finds ice within these healing syllables.
The Secret Fox photographs a moment,
the inside moment of a man, waiting for blackberries
and pretty love.

makes me grumpy,
no, not because I don't delight
in strings of coloured bulbs
and the flavor of lip chap and hot chocolate sticky,
and the bright eyes of young magickers
but because it seems that whatever the occasion,
any revelry that involves thousands of people
destroys the city, belches post-apocalyptic refuse,
and shoulder-shoves old men, knees small children.
The reason I don't like the Santa Claus Parade
is that once it's over
everything that happened
within the anonymity drug affect of invisible hordes
and the ambulances pulling away
is nobody's fault.
Merry Christmas.

With my heart I picture you in polaroids
tinted blue by my eyes, surrounded by crushed leaves.
In the skipping track of my inner eye
your mouth, the way it moves when you focus
the open-palmed reaching of marimba chorale
and softening of your brow from the vines
of midnight-colour hair.
From many perspectives, again and again,
in the skipping track of my inner eye,
photographs shot with love.

We're waiting for something,
we're waiting for something.
Winter is coming,
it's already here.

This is what we've waited for,
Song under the hardwood floor.
You are a solstice
between cold and warm.

This is what we've waited for.

Autumn in the city makes me feel lost-
Raise your voice. Shoulders back.
I bury myself, because I cannot flee-
Curve your lips. Fill your lungs.
Threads of geese passing by-
I can. I can.
Over the road, across the sky*

One year ago in a public park, wooded and frosted
with ice and the gold crunch of sleeping grass
I saw a wolf. It held my gaze. Drew near, waited.
Just the huff of our breath, little stormclouds of silver reason.

Premonition. The wolf was I. One year later,
come to tell me that I would be alright.
I can blow down even brickwork now.