when the light leaves early, sun slipping down
behind the beech trees as easily as a spoon
of cherry cough syrup, four deer step
delicately up our path, just at the moment
when the colors shift, to eat fallen apples
in the tall grass. Great grey ghosts.
If we steal outside in the dark, we can
hear them chew. A sudden movement,
they're gone, the whiteness of their tails
a burning afterimage. A hollow pumpkin
moon rises, turns the dried corn to
chiaroscuro, shape and shadow;
the breath of the wind draws the leaves
and stalks like melancholy cellos.
These days are songs, noon air that flows
like warm honey, the maple trees' glissando
of fat buttery leaves. The sun goes straight
to the gut like a slug of brandy, an eau-de-vie.
Ochre October: the sky, a blue dazzle,
the grand finale of trees, this spontaneous
applause; when darkness falls like a curtain,
the last act, the passage of time, that blue
current; October, and the light leaves early,
our radiant hungers, all these golden losses.
Barbara Crooker, from Radiance
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