I.
the warmth of night makes an unusual gallery
a cauldron of leaves spilled on the grid of streets

what stirred once, green in the heart could only be tended
by a woman or a star
atop and apart from all else that came before

no more time is granted for all of yesterday, its ripeness,
its beaming,
to hang more plumply defined than now

where so much distance reddens--is it regret?
converging behind heart's stone
to abode under sleets of snow.


II.
caught briefly in the eye,
these stars and we share intimately
the knowledge that each has expired

is it that a man must take grief in a certain swagger?
or by softness, falling unaffected through the corridor

like a whiteness
or an absence
forgetting