The trees are yellow, the chlorophyll is gone,
brown birds fit black in the sky
or the color of the wet blue
skin of horses. These stand quiet
while flies rim their eyes
to drink from the deep brown well,
wings tucked in lucent folds.
It’s apple-pie order
in this proliferation of light
except the farmer’s wall that frost jimmied open
or the deadwood from fence-palings
uprooted last Spring
piled behind the shed with the broken mower
and chalky flowerpots,
or even the smoke from the chimney that steps into the sky
like one dizzy leg.
The sun is ill with cloud
the march of pines throws a cold shadow
and the line of the hill is more calm.
Everything repeats
in odd units of time: a rumble of semis on the road below
or the statistical wind that sands chimney-corners
or the pig in my hard-drive that grunts
to be free.
I wish it was all like that.
But Monday sits on a chair
unlike yesterday when
she slept on a sofa,
and Oscar eats a big breakfast
and yesterday he just napped until Noon.
I don’t know what else to say. The
rite precedes the thought
after all. There are
moths from the last sip of night
still touring our bulb.
Their white wings lash
at the light.