October is the month that seems

All woven with midsummer dreams; 

She brings for us the golden days

That fill the air with smoky haze, 

She brings for us the lisping breeze

And wakes the gossips in the trees, 

Who whisper near the vacant nest 

Forsaken by its feathered guest. 

Now half the birds forget to sing, 

And half of them have taken wing, 

Before their pathway shall be lost

Beneath the gossamer of frost. 

Zigzag across the yellow sky, 

They rustle here and flutter there, 

Until the boughs hang chill and bare, 

What joy for us—what happiness 

Shall cheer the day the night shall bless? 

’Tis hallowe’en, the very last 

Shall keep for us remembrance fast, 

When every child shall duck the head

To find the precious pippin red. 

The Octopus offers me one of his three hearts,

briar and holly for friendship the second and third

saved for times of longing, times of loss.

A strange romance, I admit—

Friends would never approve or believe,

yet he was untouched by human hands.

How can we say this is not a source of wonder—

“Who will sing my song, if not you?”  he asked.

“Who will dream of me, as I lay under the stillness of water?”

Even an Octopus can be eloquent, and then again,

as we know, enormous need can become power.

What am I supposed to do now?

I stand by the water,

my woolen dress unraveling in the waves.

Yesterday: me, a stone, the river,
a bottle of Jack, the clouds
with unusual speed crept by.

A man was in the middle of me.
I was humbled.
Not by him. The earth,

with its unusual speed,
went from dawn to dusk to dawn.
Just like that. The light

every shade of gold. Gold. I’m
greedy for it. Light is my currency.
I am big with dawn. So hot & so

pregnant with the fire I stole.
By pregnant I mean everything
you see is of me. Daylight

is my daughter. Dusk, my lover’s
post-pleasure face. And the night?
Well. Look up.

Are you ever really alone?

All morning my daughter pleading, outside

outside. By noon I kneel to button her

coat, tie the scarf to keep her hood in place.

This is her first snow so she strains against

the ritual, spooked silent then whining,

restless under each buffeting layer,

uncertain how to settle into this

leashing. I manage at last to tunnel

her hands into mittens and she barks and

won’t stop barking, her hands suddenly paws.

She’s reduced to another state, barking

all day in these restraints. For days after

she howls into her hands, the only way

she knows now to tell me how she wants out.

Sitting at her table, she serves

the sopa de arroz to me

instinctively, and I watch her,

the absolute mamá, and eat words

I might have had to say more

out of embarrassment. To speak,

now-foreign words I used to speak,

too, dribble down her mouth as she serves

me albóndigas. No more

than a third are easy to me.

By the stove she does something with words

and looks at me only with her

back. I am full. I tell her

I taste the mint, and watch her speak

smiles at the stove. All my words

make her smile. Nani never serves

herself, she only watches me

with her skin, her hair. I ask for more.

I watch the mamá warming more

tortillas for me. I watch her

fingers in the flame for me.

Near her mouth, I see a wrinkle speak

of a man whose body serves

the ants like she serves me, then more words

from more wrinkles about children, words

about this and that, flowing more

easily from these other mouths. Each serves

as a tremendous string around her,

holding her together. They speak

Nani was this and that to me

and I wonder just how much of me

will die with her, what were the words

I could have been, was. Her insides speak

through a hundred wrinkles, now, more

than she can bear, steel around her,

shouting, then, What is this thing she serves?

She asks me if I want more.

I own no words to stop her.

Even before I speak, she serves.