the grapes are ripe and
the pears are fallen.

across the valley,
wood smoke is rising.

returning again and again to
the space between each breath,

fall colours.

i.

brother spinoza argued
for a sky defined by its clouds.

a whole science of sky phrenology
erupted- claiming to know
the dawn from dusk, gypsy
sparrows debated for hours.

while they twittered (for this
was just this morning, you see)
i looked up and saw beyond
the rising wood stove smoke-

rain.

ii.

a sheep in wolves’ clothes
knocks at my window
singing melodies
of fall

whose ways are these ways?
these ways that turn left
these ways bearing right
night ways

rivers run under
spring surrenders green
the life arriving
leaves us

and fall, patient fall
falls genderlessly
sunders differences
with grace

for winter draws near
her breath blows under
the skirt of summer
reminds

of sheep in wolves’ clothes
the return of snows
rivers below ice
sleeping

but what of the warm rain-
and the way of ferris wheels?

remember the apple's
caramel streaked across your cheek?

how we smiled and laughed that night,
our hands touching more often than
friends might touch, less often
than lovers might.

i have searched for such a poem ever
since that would capture that moment and
free me from the bondage of
poetry.

i have found something, too,
inside each of thirty-one pebbles found
in thirty-two places.

unrecognizing the wind,
tasting caramel on your lips,
we go around.

grampa didn't talk much when
working in his wood shop-
just smiled and put pre-marked into my
hands what needed to be shaped.

and that was the way of things
even in the end.

arriving at four in the morning,
the small hospice room darkly
crowded with sleeping family,
grampa alone awake smiled and said,

"david."

cody drives his cattle home
through the far country after
the first frost each fall.

there in the desert beyond
shoshone buttes,
solace is found alone.

his head fills with urban
thoughts for the first week out-
until the desert silence drives
the peddlers from the temple
of his mind.

the high country is like that.
where the indian paintbrush
burns without being consumed,
there, too, does his heart.

the hills rust
with october leaves.

students buzz
about the cafeteria.

cody looks up from a math
text and sees a sunbeam on
the table.

"you find me everywhere, then,"
he says.

"i find you everywhere, now,"
she says.

what is it about speaking that
vexes me so?

as though i know what it is
to unknow, silly hypocrit that i am.
as though i know the source of
any given thing.

what is it about the way flowers
bloom that sends my lips
flapping? its not enough for
me to see the way of dawn casting
cloud shadows among the hills-
but to say it, the dawn casts
cloud shadows among the hills.

it's not always so. sometimes
a whirlwind throws leaves about in
some pattern of intelligence beyond
my own deciphering
and the words remain
hidden from me. then,
some dark recognition bows,

silent.

he worked in the barn long past dark.

great grandpapa had built the huge clock
piece by piece- etched the very cogs from
blackened oak.

now cody repaired them.

the work was a deep spring of breath-
patience issued from the very task,
filling the dim cold with a moving silence.

finishing one cogs’ detail, he set it down
and looked up-

and there, sitting on the tractor seat,
a great horned owl,

watching.

anger visits again,
loudly.
sleep ends early.

heading down to the creek-

fog lives,
spilling from forest into
meadow.

the air thickens,
curls darkly.
in dim morning,
i cant see even

myself.