One Quick Cold Night

One quick cold night is all it takes
for leaves to snap and

fall from trees

Greensward now more
goldsward with yellow and brown

mosaics underfoot

I love really old black and white
silent movies and Wagner operas

that make us think of primordial
beginnings so lost in the fogs of

the past there’s only vestiges left and
mythological excesses

Did Jason and the Argonauts make the
voyage or thousands of merchants

sailing for gold now boiled
down to one

representational hero
made to eat his own sons?

Green lush summer in one night
turns to fall

soon tree boughs will be bare
and you can see through the

forest to surrounding city streets
though at the height of summer

it’s as dense and thick as
any first forest on earth

with or without good and evil
elves living in it with

acorn cap hats and squirrel-carriage steeds

All journeys are metaphorical after all
to the single real journey no metaphor

can adequately capture

though we wear its soul’s tattoos in our
flesh forever and as we

slide or stumble from state to state or
station to station we get

gradually transformed into gold

and though our leaves fall onto the
forest floor what branches remain

are brilliant and bare

---

9/26/2009 (from Sparks Off the Main Strike)

Categories: Poems