The Fall

I feel even now how

time’s rough sands scratch at my shore,

how it carries out the tide —

slowly, then all at once,

while childhood is laid white and bare beneath it

I felt it as the moon

baked the edges of the summer

until her corners curled to cradle us there

and our breath against my pillow

reminded me of the North Shore

where I pinned my hopes on

the perfume of pines,

pined for the broken eagle’s eye —

yellowing, swelling with years

I have yet to find

For who decides whether

wrinkled wisdom or a child’s eyes

are more telling of the end?

the living lesson?

I live less on spring than autumn,

when the remembrances of aged oaks

threaten to pull the past before me,

and I must walk backward to face the future

I must face the end of it all:

not with a wrinkle or a cry,

but with the apathetic sigh of dying summer —

her blood, her breath, kissed into gnarled trees

that refuse to fall before winter’s clouded call

and my back breaks beneath the autumn breeze

as I rake up the autumn leaves