9-26-2013

Dreadful shapes
Of once-living men,
Mouths in that slanted dusk
Shaping unvoiced words,

Those

Silhouettes conjured near the edges
Of what drops off
In darkness.

We carried
Our canvas micarta courage close to us

And I speak

for myself
when I say we
were

Too weary for the horror.

We leaned
Up on our elbows, voiceless,
With the fatwood smoke
Pouring under black-glass
Constellations,

And watched --
The way one watches
Spider legs erupt around corners,

Or a play emerge
in wordless gasping
From a splintered stage.

    The knife-worn stars.

In fields by us
Pumpkins bloomed.

I hold that breath:

The moon grinning
An old gold
Over unharvested things,
Through coal-soaked, bare-branched
Trees,

And nothing warm, and

The silhouettes brimming, yet,
Poured over mile-filed shoulders;
Shadows split open over
Edges,

All that troublesome math
Tumbled at the bottoms

Of creeks

That pour
Over all that these remembering
Hands could ever make of
Autumn,

Fall.