<\/p>\n
The good colours of autumn
\nstartle and glister.
\nA buzzing yellow.
\nThe best colours are scant in the late month,
\nlasting one brief hour
\nand then is dulled by noon\u2019s shadow.
\nThere is obedience for shadows:
\nwhere cars are no longer parked
\nleaves line the space, a curb of fringed phantoms.
\nA jogger in a matching jumpsuit
\nholds a bouquet of flowers
\nand runs between lanes,
\nwhile a trail of leaves weaved by his feet
\nscatter and die again and again,
\nstuck to the pavement.
\nYou weigh nothing,
\nappearing in the morning
\nlike leaves fallen on the trunk of a car
\nyou weigh nothing
\nand yet I have to sweep you,
\nmy unfailing morning valet.
\nSometimes one needs to step
\non a stranger\u2019s lawn
\nto see the best angles of the 4:25 sun.
\nYou seize me mid-air (or maybe I have let you in)
\nlike a leaf whipped into a dusty bag,
\nsuch chance, such accuracy of wind.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Someone told me that on overcast days, <\/p>\n <\/p>\n (after WCW)<\/em><\/p>\n Let me not forget at least <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I want not the evening reflection of the white birch trees in the flooded ditch. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\u2019s shadow. There is obedience for shadows: where cars are no longer parked leaves line the space, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1049,"parent":229,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-662","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1029,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/662\/revisions\/1029"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nwe all look good in photos.
\nA woman presses her lips
\nat her compact mirror,
\nthe lines around her mouth
\nno longer try to stretch.
\nShe has put on lipstick for this light,
\nwhich has deadened
\nthe severity of sunup
\nand we wait for the bus
\nwith our watery morning faces.
\nWhen we board,
\nthe clouds split blue,
\nand the solid hit of shadows
\nrocks us.
\nThe old woman rings her stop
\nsmoothing her skirt when she gets up.
\nThere is still some decency<\/em>,
\nher hands say, hushing the pleats,
\nsome modesty at an early hour.<\/em><\/p>\nAgainst the Sky<\/h2>\n
\nthe afternoon rainfall
\ndrenching all the streets
\nwith no sense of sunlight
\nand the powdered dryness
\nthat evening, asthmatic,
\nso cardboard the air, one’s laughter
\nwould have to be dusted.
\nThe pigeon dropped nothing
\nbut a feather on a bronze lapel
\nand the wind, rueful, scuffled
\nwith it the rest of the way down
\nwhile the window cleaner’s ropes
\nplotted a parabola against
\na glass grid, so graceful
\nelegance was never a question.<\/p>\nParallax<\/h2>\n
\nI want not the tire embedded at the top of the hillock.
\nI want not the lady\u2019s slippers clustered in tiptoed ellipses.
\nI want not the telephone wires, stitched in the trees.
\nI want not the spotted goats chewing by the fence,
\nor the planted deaths and the crooked weight of stones.
\nI want only to show you how staggering green the field,
\nits opulence opening the eye\u2019s stopple,
\nuntil it ripens behind us.<\/p>\n