when the light leaves early,
sun slipping down 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
eaves 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
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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