FALL RAIN, FALL WIND AND LEAF

Fall rain, fall wind and leaf.
Wash the parched emaciated flesh
and heaps of ash in the gutters.
Make new trout brooks and green.
Bring the mysterious illness west,
the chill, the fever swells
and necessary deaths.
Let them at the edge tumble
and bury their small miseries.

We bent too long to the summer,
that deranged widow howling
all August through the morphine,
cursing the nurses and daughter
who crossed the country to comb
the old woman's hair at midnight
and hold the discolored claw
of a hand, touching the erratic
pulse with her tongue knowing
forgiveness would be denied.

Fall rain, fall wind and leaf.

Bring the sudden cold and abandonment, the loss

of trust, the rush of a shapeless

hungry black space drunk on itself.

Let us camp on the banks of fat

rivers and forget our thirst

and walking sores and the tangled

cities perched in the lap 

of dying seas where we have

too long tended the graves

of those we love.