I thought of going back home
One weekend near the end of October
And walking again through the woods. I thought
I'd find the rocks in habits of pale green,
The knots of trees more gnarled, their shadows
Sewing hems on the frayed train of the sun.
And I found the tattered sun
Draped over things I half-believed were home
At second glance. The arabesquing shadows
Beckoned to the dance of past Octobers,
When maples held their leaves for evergreen
And had their sugared arms broke for the thought;
Heavy fell the snows they thought
Were weeks away. The cauterizing sun
Has closed those wounds, but underneath new green
Has suckled of its rays & made a home.
This too proffers hubris to October,
And soon must pay support to pregnant shadows.
Yet now I find the shadows
All unpeopled. Gone the shades of thought
That budded Mays & reddened with Octobers,
That cast out from their hands expiring suns.
Prodigalling toward their darkened home,
I spot the razing thorns that clothe the green.
How like memory this green,
That late seems young & lowly hides in shadows
Spurred contortions in the spines of things. Home
My body far from here, that worming thought
Not eat my shapely bones, but let the sun
Bathe them dry & bright as an October.
Let's ossify, October.
Make this ground unworkable to the green
That spins & would encrypt us from the sun.
Shed the leaves that corporate your shadows,
And I will bare my mind of cloying thought;
We'll strip these rocks of moss & found a home.
October, thin the darkness of your shadow;
Press flat the green with winter-nearing thoughts;
Let sunlight scour the mansions of our home.