Planes streak across the wide October sky–
The sun is setting–
Contrails stream behind them,
glowing scars of the evening.


The highest ones, they exhale the day’s gold,
pure and sharp
like fields of August wheat,
dusty and late-summer charred.

Redder and lower ones hug the skyline,
No cloud to catch them,
Fall like meteorites,
the slow burn of a dwarf star

Memories never print so vividly,
slow burn sees fast death,
Reds, golds and what's between,
A brain is all catch-and-release


So afterwards what should be left of this?
Not but an umbra,
Impressionist beauty,

A mere relief of its source?


Beauty’s slow fade is not the tragedy,
–rather the reverse–
That we fade to beauty,
To never hold it in full.