Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Gravitational Pull

I have felt a weight 
like a collapsing house pouring down around me,
littering its splintered doors and 
jagged runners of glass in my hair, 
opening veins for blood to seep 
through clutched hands into a darkening nowhere.

This quiet inertia will eventually pull the stars from their 
fixed coordinates, 
drag the very sky itself into the black hollows of the earth,
to disappear beneath an undisturbed surface
with me at its center,
dazed by flaming years too bright to see directly.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Faceless Form

There is a strangeness to a figure glimpsed at a distance,
whether trailed down a deserted twilight street,
or standing statue-like in an overgrown yard,
like a black chalk-mark against an overcast sky,
features indiscernible from across this void, 
but clearly staring in your direction. 

It's as if such a spirit
could pull the very landscape down around them,
with a wordless raising of fists, 
or a silent nod. 

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Early October In Burlington

Gold-washed autumn has descended these hills 
like some conjured bit of wicked magic, 
stilling the green-wreathed leaves in their festive sway
to send them sailing to a colder soil;
they gather littered in storm drains and 
at the edges of driveways,
crisp and crackling.

Night-dark steals in a little earlier than before,
and the highways clear of all vacation traffic
as if an alarm has sounded somewhere,
indicating swift retreat.
These later hours stay tinged by woodsmoke and rust,
curling through the parted curtains
of upstairs bedrooms, 
as the earth slumps away from the sun.