Let the ink draw out the poison
Or does it feel like you're
Willing to lose blood to lose poison?

Little blue marble
Hurtling through outer space
With lone yellow star

As I lie in autumn dreams
I see the moonlight shine in beams
And caress the rose red fall-time leaves
That flail and flutter beneath the trees

While autumn blooms are not unseen
They distract the crowds with grace serene
A performance of pirouetting figurines
Whose voices are drowned by our machines

As humans we stumble and struggle through life
We carry our shame and we comfort our strife
While the trees are all children whose leaves are small kites
That get tossed up and blown round by faith and not sight

I know the world is autumn's fight
As starshine fades and day breaks night
Is it happenstance or is it right
That branches shed what gives them life?

last winter
at a downtown coffee shop
I sat on the bar stool near the window

I watched the people on the sidewalk
pulling their coats and scarves around their necks
keeping the wind out

I sipped a peppermint tea, a temporary comfort,
and watched
as they entered their apartment towers
moments later, high up, a window would light up with a yellow glow

a far away
warm, bright, home

and I’m looking at them, and I know, that I should go on
to wherever it is that hearts go on to
that it’s not doing me any good to sit here
wishing for a brightness of my own

but,

what’s hope for if not this?
I’m not sorry
I can’t be sorry
I won’t be sorry
that I’m going to stay awhile
looking at the lights in the windows
of everyone else’s home