Deciding Origins (3)

The rain's moved overhead and sifted through.
We're getting used to cold     /used to this moon
the dark makes known by effects     /this moonlight

alive in the tall limbs     /now that the rain's
moved east     /drawing the oceans out of us     /used
to these kitchens warmed again

with European recipes     /with the menus planned
to complement the harvest.  We're glad
for these caesars and kebabs     /for this buttered

brown-sugared squash     /these trees as they are
for the first time since April patterned them
/revealing these homes the neighbors on the crest

will fuss about     /setting their hearts to holidays
/smiling to pay old tribute to old spooks and marketing.
We're glad for the cider     /the bordeaux.

And here     /where the first leaves flared and fell
/glad for these stories we can't uncouple or complete
/for nights such as stories make

/here where the sedum's run through its full range
of autumn colors     /glad for this dark the owl
has told his own and other hungers.  And nothing

at all maybe     /the ways we used to think of it
/the moonlight sits tall limbs the caterpillars occupied
/and nothing at all     /and everything     /these

lives beheld in snows that followed lives from matinees
/glad to be turned again and touched     /and glad
in their own experiments and stray necessities

/for all that the winters made with them
/the seasons like minds made up     /deciding influence
deciding our minor parts in it     /beholding

the night's deep blues     /and now
this moon made classical.

*

The news will be Chinese visitors.  The news will be
snapped spruce crowns     /early aspen snows
taking the cottonwoods apart     /the aspen limbs apart

and down on power-lines.  The news will be snows
/torched barns    /the terrible afterglow
and sale signs come down     /drawn arms and spats

and prisoner exchanges      /concocted documents
/all of this feeding yet in all the undecoded stuff     /where
the cardinals sunned themselves     /where

the wind in the spun leaves     /playing sounds-alike
/senses the cousin drums     /the keyboards mis-engaged
/the dark's own hungers     /turning hungers

on themselves.  We're glad for the dates and registries
/glad for the faded script     /the hues that had been wet inks
/sub-hues in script that meant a young woman

consenting     /meant music we live within— enacting
/repeating love— the alchemy in eyes     /where vows
could still mean everything.  So the dogwood's come

to these bright leaves and certain berries     /sharing—
in moving air— these moods a cold moon's stretched
to extra-innings     /October a mind made up     /deciding

origins     /deciding this moon another night     /there
on the ghost-ships     /ghost-clouds     /involving the ghosts
another night in suppertalk—  As warm as they'll get

we think     /where the leaves are swept like issues
into worlds     /warm where the cardinals sunned themselves
/where the finches fade to shades of winter hardwoods

and warm as the moon itself     /in its surreal clarity
/encourages arms around     /bringing our arms around
in an environment like dreaming     /restoring the medley

as is     /remastering the tracks in currencies
and scripts they've left to us     /entrusting the moon
as is to us     /this coin in the dark our hearts

might put ahead on lotteries     /speaking their names
as is     /their names the ways they said them     /and
hearing the words come after them     /in these crowns

of colors winds abandon or make over     /speaking
their own news into it     /a little less maybe     /for all
the innocence     /for all this flesh made warm

and warm as yet from coupling.

 

© Appetite (2)