and falling aspirations.
The world,
from our perspective, is foreshadowed;
we walk through fields of graying leaves.
The sky is iron-lidded. Dead tracery
lies everywhere:
battered hulls about our feet,
veins, now dry as chalk and worn,
clinging
to their olden patterns, tapestry
of frosted glass whose point of view is shattered.
A luminous breath has etched the hedgerows.
Now a cardinal,
a single spot of color,
breaks from the bushes, heading west,
but can only go so far.
Meanwhile,
the watery sun, a single, unmoving eye,
takes us all in:
skeletons of the elms,
two muffled figures, a blotch of red.
In what particular context
will it place us?
Only that of simple things.
Motion notwithstanding,
and variations
on that theme, depth is clearly limited
by single-mindedness.
The view of two
is prelude to the give-and-take
of bodies,
which may ultimately lead
to love.
And this is what we seem to need
to keep us hale, to help us see
from inside-out
and upside-down
perspectives.
Assume, for instance,
that the elms in winter imitate the bears
and bring their slowed-down pulses underground
to blossom,
in inverted,
dream-like splendor,
in the warm, forgiving contours of the earth.
Then, conversely, as a heart may live
in undifferentiated darkness
for a spell,
it may brave the light,
beat out from under cover and give
to the view of the rest of the world
a bit of color, which,
like a kite in the wind,
in the leaden embrace of an autumn sky,
will tug at its moorings
and shine.