The leaves are putting their shadows to bed.
Among my imaginal people who once were real.
I talk to them in melancholy.
I walk along implausible edges of my soul.
No one can write his story before it comes.
Does God do that?
Play jazz and watch the hours dance inside me?
I could never have seen you from the past.
The figures on the wall taking form.
The music, a different song each day.
That is how poems get written
before they blow away like leaves,
filling ditches, floating on water,
gathering around chairs on the patio.
Let them stay there.
Don’t sweep them away.
So I join you in conversation at the table.
In silence, full of words,
trading eyes, being young and old together.
Warm and cold at the same time.
The past indestructible,
the future up for grabs.
What a lovely way to spend a silence,
watching the leaves sail by.