Autumn Song

Withdrawing from the blood bank,

my teeth a shower of sparks,

I cancel any unused promises

and scratch my cheeks in the dark

tottering state, leaves barely requiring

and gripped by a thread of cartilage

that becomes song. The moon is here too

as expected, scything the overlong heat

where the callicarpa bobs against a red

rowan tree. The song tells an old story of long

desire, healed and frozen like a stick.

It is running out of places to play

in my body though I hold it up

with questions and pills. It won’t continue

to rhyme, blood and moon, heat

and incomplete; my childbed

is full of mice come in for winter.

A man stands on his balcony, gurning at death.

So many of us are disappearing these days

the weather is metaphysical, the wind

owes me a tuning an information

as I am arrested between old and young,

between men, between the wondering

and the answer

hidden in a snow bank, a snatch of fire

the thing that drops finally, losing its grip

the catch

the catch the catch