Another autumn peels forth from the walls, leaving
apple-red strewn over the birdhouse on the front lawn.
I think how you saw this place and said we’d be lucky to live here.

My love, you're never wrong. The porch ceiling shimmers my smoke.
Still, that cough in my spine's getting deeper. Sally said this afternoon: maybe something’s fighting to come out, or be wiped away.

My spliced mind's the concrete that old seed’s entombed with.
My roots grew deep in that road he stuck his knife into,
the one they paved solid and covered thick with white pickets.

If I could go back I would leave a time capsule on that hill
with all our sticks and rocks, in our pinestraw nest in the bushes.
I’d leave something for us I still can’t name.

*

There’s permission in the wind, Sally says: Still, still, to change.
The migrating flock in the sky finds its symmetry as soon as I sense it.

Wait — there was a clarity that day in Virginia before,
when the mountain sang back each leafblown psalm.

Grey solemns stretched their patient palms for miles.
My brother stuck his tongue out, and he giggled like a child.

If dilapidated barns could speak a dire warning they would teach
Hard Winters and meager survival , the mattock , the stubborn mule and the King James Bible ..Tending fields long before sunrise , the smoke of field fires well into night , gathering to the clang of morning cattle , the prattle of laying hens , tolling of chain , the call of the anvil .. Drops of well water forming ripples
Do waves continue forever , do they return someday to reconnect with
their maker , wood buildings become footnotes in history physically entombed in past thought turned to laden misery , the farm has changed since we slipped away , now old barns seem to search for a master like a canine stray , Oaks are now devoid of their cover  , roots struggling for their freedom today , windswept leaves forging legions
An attempt to secure the forest floor , pinestraw , bracht , needle and twig called to war
Annihilated by the decomposers borne of wind , rain and soil
The breakdown of her subjects at the sword of power , the butchers of freewill and reason doth carouse  
Withered , stained monuments are collecting moss , crumbling like old barns and field houses* ...

Dripping drops, dripping drops,
a puddle here and there,
crimson and fading to black,
the pinestraw congealing.

The shadowed form stares,
back down the tunneled trees,
a torturous silhouette standing,
moonlight shines, but cannot identify.

A demon loose in the pines,
branching out to barren land,
but returning to his lair,
leaving a luring trail.

Do not follow the dripping drops,
smeared here and there,
if you do, your bones too,
will reside upon the pile.