This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper*
                                                   -T.S. Eliot

October
The sun stuck--
hung in the pines all night.
It turned out--
forever was a field at dusk, frozen golden--
and the end is endless evening--
final fall.

November
Snow fell too soon.

The edges of  life grew round,
golden, padded in ice.

December
The children hummed,
sat in circles, stacked the bones
of birds like sticks.

Their fathers built fires,
sat in circles, screamed
at the faces in the flames.

January
The ones with wild eyes slid
from their bodies, flared into foxes,
flickered like rubies  in the ferns.

Only then did we notice
the shadows---

Long blue ghosts

slanting off our bodies
at angles,
                  angels

                            pul­ling us Eastward.