Residual Haunting

Remember now the fraying of shadows,

the transparency of hours witnessed through a veil

stitched tightly with wandering forgottens.

Time lifts languidly past towered waves 

that roar blackly against sorrow's sands,

like tears and scratches on the lost attic film,

or wounded hands clasped against the darkfall.

Now remain indoors, the storm has descended

this snow-wreath'd mountaintop,

and no headlights dare cut the gloom

as you steer your crumbled way across

your map of worn, indulgent nostalgia,

thrust into the arms of regret, of towns

with stray-dog borders and 

wayward allegiances devouring

along fire-carved hillsides.

There's gravity in these harrowed fields,

these slow sleeping buildings and interstates, 

and the glow through the collapsed birches

where the sun decays its abject half-life,

a land swept apart by candles in windows

and hex signs scrawled in chalk on barn doors, 

the whisper of shorelines and skiffs unsailed,

and the songbird's most desolate call.

Night Work

Your signal fires are paling now, 

all that luminescent vitriol

sputtering back to the earth like

spent catherine wheels 

in the half-lit summer chill,

or the blossoming of fireworks

flowers over the high school fields

of this half-shadowed youth,

pines lingering beyond the goalposts

and the looming levees,

their jagged black spires 

like knives aimed towards 

impossibly distant stars,

a receding gloom of embers

as the rusting years commence.

An Incantation

Gather and join hands together,
this is the autumn of our mountain.
The blindfold is thin protection
against the black winds raging
from the snowcapped peaks
through the hollow eaves of the valley.

This void stands, precariously balanced
in the talons of shadowy birds,
hunting the gray skies as the
crops erode into dust,
and the windows are shuttered
against the promise of a darkened dawn.

Scratch each name across a clouded mirror,
and draw an X through every one.
This is the blood season of last things,
and last words to recall them by.