Ode to Absence
The good colours of autumn
startle and glister.
A buzzing yellow.
The best colours are scant in the late month,
lasting one brief hour
and then is dulled by noon’s shadow.
There is obedience for shadows:
where cars are no longer parked
leaves line the space, a curb of fringed phantoms.
A jogger in a matching jumpsuit
holds a bouquet of flowers
and runs between lanes,
while a trail of leaves weaved by his feet
scatter and die again and again,
stuck to the pavement.
You weigh nothing,
appearing in the morning
like leaves fallen on the trunk of a car
you weigh nothing
and yet I have to sweep you,
my unfailing morning valet.
Sometimes one needs to step
on a stranger’s lawn
to see the best angles of the 4:25 sun.
You seize me mid-air (or maybe I have let you in)
like a leaf whipped into a dusty bag,
such chance, such accuracy of wind.
Ode to the People Waiting for the Bus at 8:04 a.m.
Someone told me that on overcast days,
we all look good in photos.
A woman presses her lips
at her compact mirror,
the lines around her mouth
no longer try to stretch.
She has put on lipstick for this light,
which has deadened
the severity of sunup
and we wait for the bus
with our watery morning faces.
When we board,
the clouds split blue,
and the solid hit of shadows
rocks us.
The old woman rings her stop
smoothing her skirt when she gets up.
There is still some decency,
her hands say, hushing the pleats,
some modesty at an early hour.
Against the Sky
(after WCW)
Let me not forget at least
the afternoon rainfall
drenching all the streets
with no sense of sunlight
and the powdered dryness
that evening, asthmatic,
so cardboard the air, one’s laughter
would have to be dusted.
The pigeon dropped nothing
but a feather on a bronze lapel
and the wind, rueful, scuffled
with it the rest of the way down
while the window cleaner’s ropes
plotted a parabola against
a glass grid, so graceful
elegance was never a question.
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