October

These ancient nights
Stack close
To the ends of all things
And pour into the earth
Still; again; with
Cold, sturdy edges
Honed against their own forms,

Alone as October

Trees
Returning
To their own, tried darknesses;
Sinking back
Into shadows
That they have brought alongside
Themselves.

And the wind, murmuring
Familiar rounds
Through another year's dusk
Of recalling leaves,

It's sigh
Curling over
Stirred coals

And the old, grasping whisper
Gathered
Against fence line
And threshold.

And late -
In the storied,
Waiting murk -

Winter

Come over the open
Fields of fallen corn
To nose up to the fire.

I remember well
Each and every return.

10-20-2013

These October trees
Grasp hopelessly
After their leaves
In fear of inevitable winter,
Its coming absences,
And wild, empty winds
Screaming over plains.

And the winter will come, and
It's absences,
And the trees will crouch
Naked
On the plains, in the wind,
Leafless and stony and old.

And all night, every night,
They will dream
Of pulling their long roots
Out of the earth's crust
And stumbling, fat-footed
In flight, and wander,
And escape.

But somewhere,
Near the thin sapling still suspended
At the center of what the decades
And the wounds and the weathers
Have calloused and encased,

They know that they
Are purposed
To awaken where they were;
Find themselves where they were.

10-17-2013

When the leaves have fallen
To the last,

There is no
Possibility
Of branch-lifted leaves
Moving
In wind
Against a harvest moon.

And without harvest
The moon is same
As any month,
Leafless
Or otherwise.

Roads are that way,
In their waiting:

The expectations
They lift up
Through themselves;

That path behind the chapel
At college
That quits itself
And becomes
A thick.

That drive home
From
Alongside wreckages.

Yet

When the leaves have fallen
To the last,

The harvest moon
Is uncovered
Easily

From beneath the black wet branches.

What You Awoke

What you

Awoke

Your hands
offered up

Tall
pines

proud

Staggering

leaned
over gold

Straight branches

Under and

Along

Dreams of
rivers

twin,

navigated

knotted lines

surrendered

necklaces,

chainlink,

high school
darkrooms

and

rockets
sent

to
what was
hoped

for,

shut eyes,

miles,

piles of
sharpened

stones,

record store bin

dividers.

Left
By the road.

10-3-2013

The trees
surrender in unison,

and their leaves are lost
in one collective gasp
to roadways and shoulders
and lift-bridges.

We stand at the edge of the park
and see it
lumbering, thick-furred,
long-clawed
toward us
along the tracks.

In our childhoods,
we recall this death.

Our first death.

We give the trees
until the end
of October
to get it done.

To paint the earth
with fire,

before the wind
and the white
come
to our doorframes
and our driveways;

before the deer-kill.

Before the diesel
jellies
in the tanks
near Lake Winnipeg,

and the cold moon
carves itself into
what we see
and what we hope for.

10-2-2013

In the end
you will own all rivers,
so
you will own
my drowning;

And those pines
uprooted for it
that widen the banks
and polish my bones.

I asked of you
all that I'd been
commanded to ask.

I waited, knifeless,
in all that dark.

10-1-2013

I had been
explaining the prairie
to my sons when
the Fox Sedge and
Culver's Root
leapt up around us,
and they were suddenly gone to me
among the saddle-tall stalks.

Long before,
I fell upon a
shoreless plain
and watched it
unfold this way.

For years I rolled,
a wordless fool,
between autumns,
and gatherings
of unlit streetlamps.

I stumbled over well-vined
pumpkins,
and the church-watched sorrows
of grace
pulled away and out from underneath.

But thank God
for those low-angled twilights
hanging off my belt,

old as iron mines:

 I would not have otherwise come across my boys,

their legs
shaking,
knit together
near
the grown-over paths.