away

I know pretty pictures but it's nearly my birthday and it's playoff
season and all of a sudden all the leaves tumbled off branches
in wind andit smells like decay, which I don't mind in fact aside
from the smell of the ocean the scent of fall is one of my most
favorite, and I'm making soup for dinner and will probably go kick
some leaf piles later so there.
(I haven't really been away, just from here, but really
I've been around it's just that sometimes
I don't want to be here here.)

Here

Stopped by the farm to pick up tomatoes -- the last of the season probably.
The place teemed with apple-picking families. The stand was filled with
'mums and I could smell the home made donuts. Fall is here. Leaves
are turning. It's my favorite time, October especially. I think
I've finally left summer behind, though for some reason it
took longer than usual to relinquish it. I'd still like one more sea
swim. I'm rushing through Frida Kahlo's diary (thanks Rebecca) so
that I can read it again. Amazing sketches, doodles, words, blots of
ink. Then onto other books. And to watching the fall climb
out of the skin of summer, shedding all that green.

This dank autumn day

It's oddly humid for October, more like July, except the leaves are turning and falling.
K's cat died, rather we "put him to sleep." A moving on. This is the season.

Jean Valentine's new book continues to haunt. Here's why.



I was lying there

I was lying there, half-alive
in a wooden room at a Russian country place.
You sat by me quietly. It's true you left
sometimes, but came back, sat by me
kindly quietly.
Woodsman, would you go back to the little-
light-wrapped trees
and turn them on again?
The hide of the deer shivered
The summer wind riffled through my hair.
You are on
a long, patient, summer visit from death.
I am forgiven. Forgiving. To your place
the next to be born.


To my soul (2)

Will I miss you
uncanny other
in the next life?

And you & I, my other, leave
the body, not leave the earth?

And you, a child in a field,
and I, a child on a train, go by, go by,

And what we had
give way like coffee grains
brushed across paper...