Occasions On The First Walk Of Autumn

1.
The furnace finally rinses the rooms with heat.
Its weightless scent unlocks my childhood
And the old selves open like Chinese boxes.
Inside, nothing but this unbearable happiness,
Wanting to hold mother’s hand while
Cold winds try the shape of the house.

2.
As I step outside, I hear a cricket
In a crack, splitting the cement with its small hammer.
I must learn to repeat one note until it perfects me.

3.
Above me, red-winged blackbirds break
The hard bread of the sky for the last time.
I drink emptiness from my hand, that broken goblet.

4.
Leaves are scattered on the lawn like the scriptures
Of an older religion. I read their fine print,
The prophecies of impending winter.

5.
Spirit moving the trees, glossolalia of the grasses.
I want to be the burning bush
From which another voice speaks.

6.
A thin boy leaves the yellow hell of his schoolbus
And skitters past me, clutching his lunchbox
As if it held his life, the cellophane memories.
I always meet myself coming the other way

7.
I observe the maples, their underground symmetry:
The roots like branches in a slower, darker wind.
Nerves of the earth, the trunks are synapses
Communicating the winds of one world to the other.

8.
The remaining leaves of the silver-maple,
Veined and pale as a priest’s hands, bless me.
As I take the old road into the woods, the stone
I kick guides me like a poor-man’s Virgil.