Novembers

Confounded language
and aftermath,

leaves
cradled under fences,
edges gathered,
drawn, spun,
lifted up by old light
atop
silhouettes of
high-tension towers
strung over the low,
late-autumn sun.

Six or seven minutes

in all the world
have been hammered
from this slant of light.

And there, maybe,
the delicate erosions of
footfall
in leaf litter
along the Indian Boundary Line,
or in some years
the rusting Wabash,
poured upon, vanished
by wind and dark
and the moments
they define.

I wake up and pray
without ceasing
in that old country,
when it comes near.

Those old, shivering days;

Another earth,
drifting
alongside the old one,

its
dust,
its uttering serpants

spinning slowly away
in rivulets
of silver

in a new skyline
on shores
just over the rise.