The beginning of the end.
Raindrops stoke the fire. Two drops.
Earthquake rumbles out in silent tremors.
I begin to forget why I’m even here.
No renaissance man ever went fishing
alone before dusk or after dawn.
How else would a tree know
if his roots had overgrown?
Gathered around a bonfire
drinking up each other’s thoughts.
Horses neigh from the barn, so thirsty.
Some flames do change and trick us;
Stallions ranging the prairie, all ablaze.
Fall can make green into orangey-reds
or subtle arrangements of browns and grays.
Crisp and so dead, yet with the color of fire too.
And how about that ridge above the tree-line.
Trees all burnt down some forty fires ago,
but you can still see the line. Two trees
standing next to one another. Moon grows.
Stained glass done how the Aztecs would’ve done it.
Clothes made off like a silk worm’s constricting cocoon.
Moths gathered around the source, clamoring for candlelight.
A single leaf lazily dropping in the dead heat of a summer night
frenzied me, got me all pensive from midnight to high noon
wondering what Autumn could possibly bring if I just sit
here on this boulder until the first inch of snow.
Woodpecker knocks on wood, superstitious.
Fall borrows life, lending it to Spring.
Fishing at night, catch then release.
He does empty out some forests,
he does freeze the night lakes over,
he makes deaths out to be gold
and outrageously gorgeous affairs.
Non-morbid is the circling of life.
Birds sent southward in the thousands at his say,
Leaving him to prepare to sap life from the trees– Newly lifeless elder trees.
Always borrowing. Always borrowing.
I will sit on this stone
and watch the ditch flow.
Memories are the thickest:
Two slices of provolone,
ham and Dijon mustard
on Dakota wheat bread.
Walking along his fence browsing
left to right, north to south like reading a book
or scanning through paintings in a museum.
Knots in wood fences are the same.
He takes a bite, offers me one.
It is Autumn and the trees are turning.
Freshly dewed yearning still beguiles me today.
Crisp and so dead. Fall does change and trick us.
With his eyes green as ivy clinging to brick.
Brown in fading shades making curls
on the leaves. Burning newspaper.
Trees have set this city on fire.
Breath is now seen in the air.
Signal fires light as Winter
makes her way in.
I have only one
question for
Fall.