Fallen

Now that cold and wind have stripped the trees the sky can reach all the way to the ground. It lies against the scrubby lawns and the gray pavements, connecting them to the clouds and the stars. Light and darkness now penetrate everything; the naked world has nowhere to hide. Sounds, no longer baffled, ring out. Dogs and birds astonish one another. When moonless night falls I walk to the trunk of the oak and look up at the shape of its bare branches. The darkness spilling over me has no shade in it, but only celestial distance. My voice has gone out there to scatter and fade, and nothing can ever reassemble those sounds, but the air carries their imprint forever. Everything that has ever happened is in that sky, even the fall of the leaves that has brought it here to touch the bark of the bare trees.


( Sunday Verse )