A LITTLE LIGHT ENCHANTS ME ALWAYS IN THE DARK

A little light enchants me always in the dark:

through notes of wind and bell, I wait for it.

I woke before noon this morning

to last leaves suspended in a dream,

their masses gliding down toward winter,

each trunk besieged, the trees and slant city

bearing every season’s breeze—

Who sees wind at the heart of loss?

Who leads me to listen

for the strains of these branches,

five claws of the harvest wind splayed open?

Wind and its shadow draw young leaves

from the hands of the dead, fingernails

extracted one by one. This implement,

this manlike shadow spurned by men

though they walk through it,

how it drains the light from a dying face

as its burnished gleam cuts forests.

Against spring’s light I walked toward dawn,

under a tree that hates and recalls me, that apple

where memory’s shelf went green.

The wings of May awaken bones,

a wide sheen spread before me.

On this lush grass I lie awake,

turning as the sky turns,

death’s inscriptions on my face,

the flickering celestial

accustomed to collapse.

If death is pierced by luminescence,

this solitary church must be the last column

to gauge the failing light of stars.

What’s missing’s what’s left out.