Mid-October Valentine

1.
I suppose these leaves seemed real enough
back in the spring just starting out
enthused as any human failure
or maybe it was just the greenness
that made them seem so brave
and eager to succeed but now they all
go over to the merely beautiful
and fall though the wind works them
wonderfully to some further flight
one I closely followed to the corner so
aerodynamically correctly it was formed
until it snagged in the naked thorns
of a bridal wreath beside a dead garage
all dying is beautiful and money to be made
carting city folks out to watch the blood
flow and the gold and yellow that is
a style of glory sailing out for miles
into the Sunday air with peace its prize


2.

Some crazy kid has graffiti-ed half the sky

with pinkish streamers out behind
his mother’s crocheted trees and fog
but he has long since come and gone
his father’s milking ghost-cows in the white
dream that used to be a barn
nothing you almost see is real except the pond
shivering quietly between surrender
and three small koi - let this be my postcard
with that red bush a fiery furnace in color
if not in flame one detail in the burning
of the world that happens to be staring
straight at me from far across the hill
I want my mind to be that empty field
it borders shorn to stubble by some lucky
farmer’s last bales stashed in the new barn
he and all his family gone to celebrate in town
 

3.

In the last field the blueberry bushes

stand naked in the setting sun
I tiptoe past it’s so quiet curious for
the clearing I know must be nearby
it’s hard to be a poet in search of
new words for this loneliness
the little stream chattering  go away
every tree a door slammed in my face
the whole earth a disappointed lover
the sun saying well don’t look at me
yes yes you’re right of course I plead
let me just sit here in the silence
one more time we don’t have to speak
often I try to remember how it happened
as if it was just one particular day
one moment in the night I knew
I could no longer see your face
no matter how much time we have
we can’t go back there can’t revisit
what no longer lives I love you
think about it will you so will I