Fall fell wind-wise today—
trembles of dried lilac stalks, dead
hydrangea that couldn’t reach
water, all the finches and wrens
boldly on the move. Fall fell, my friend.
It ended summer like the last page
of the last chapter of your life.
What can I do about the turbulent
underneaths impossible to tamp down—
my yard stripped to incidentals—
sifted and judged, rearranged?
If work is sacred, as we both believed,
it also exacts a tax: the rake’s
black splinter in the heel
of my thumb, a few new blisters.
I still can’t accept life’s abandon,
how the leaves are our lives
and not at the same time,
or that the fence, its posts bearing
so much weight, are a symbol
of my own manhood
beginning to rot. I’m sorry if some
of these images aren’t tried and true.
The best pictures I’ll ever make
(and man, I wish I could text them to you)
were taken today in my yard,
my finger touching a white digital button
to capture some delight amidst
death itself, Olivia hiding inside
the great mound we gathered
despite the whipping wind, her face
bursting with joy—as she emerged
from our quarry and kicked
the leaves out, as she tossed up armfuls.

This is me mistaking bats for swallows.  
It’s a new story. This is me trying 

to change my mind. I’ve seen the door  
my family takes: my father,

my cousins, my uncle. Ends 
of rope, cold barrels gone hot & cold 

again in the hand. It is a shocking thing 
to know how possible finality can be:

the burden of it, weighing on backs.  
Look up: hear that cheeping that comes 

at dusk: focus on the sound of it: looking  
for direction, avoiding obstacles. 

There is no comfort in this. 

This is me hoping to find something  
in the resurrection moss. How it clings 

to limbs that make arches over the roads  
that I drive. This is me leaving the nail 

in my tire. Filling my tire with air every ten days. 
This is me leaving again. I’m scared

to answer the phone. This is me falling in love  
with the northwest breeze on the right street, 

a leaf swirling to the ground, the sound  
of someone’s voice through something 

plastic. The creeping shapes in my dark yard.  
When they die they hurt us all. I’m worried 

I wouldn’t even do that. Here comes the heat  
again, brewing, pushing me into places. Here 

is my little motor. Tweaked and ticking. This is me  
looking up. This is me mistaking swallows for bats. 

^{—after Kaveh Akbar’s “Poetry and Spirituality”}

Before me Kawishiwi stretches— 
river a palette of frost. Nearby  
glazed berries dot the cranberry bushes, 
melt into mirage. Icicles 
too drip remembrance.

But metaphors of a world asleep  
fail this place where even now 
a pileated woodpecker beats a rhythm  
of search—repeats, day by day deeper.  
Watch while the leafless oak opens.

Beneath the protective skin 
of tree, more hard-shelled beings— 
bark beetles, exoskeletons of ants. 
Hear the purr of wings landing,  
jarring rattle as head recites hunger. 

Watch the red blur of devotion—  
manic as our soul, our alone. 
Yet steadily each body maps resilience. 
Where survival turns with planet,  
chases the sun, wait is a courage

we name winter. Beneath ice 
mink, muskrat, and otter swim, 
stalk sleek shadows of fish.  
Woodland dwellers find feast each season— 
oh despair, make that your gospel.

Still, forest grandmothers—all roots 
trunks and limbs—uphold their pact. 
In rhythm of warm days and freezing  
nights, tree roots suction, sap spills 
through bark wounds. Then our tongues 
sticky with spring—then, our song. 

But, in January, we hold this promise. 
While lake ice shifts, dark a murmur, 
a creak. Now moonlight falls on snow crusts— 
always where two touch, night glistens. 
When distant wolf howls, answer comes.

Imagine the upturned muzzle, body  
a triangle of sound. Hazel eyes  
mere slits. This reverence—an ancient hunger 
for pack. See, too, each black branch; 
limbing—bare, suspended in soon.

How pristine the listening posture 
of pine marten, of fisher, of fox— 
each body cocked. To pounce, to dive 
nose-first into snow’s secrets, 
to search winter tunnels for mice.

We, too, poised like supplicants— 
rawness of the world a prayer 
we read but cannot speak. Silence 
an invocation, heavy as tobacco  
sinking into snow—into earth’s altar.

Against moon’s brilliance, slit your eyes. 
Let warmth of reflected light fill you; 
that holy—that glance of tiny gods. 
Make of your hands an empty globe, 
your body a vessel taut as river.