Saturday, December 18, 2010

A small empire of remembrance

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Autumn Comes Green

We forget what green looks like
when summer strips the grass,
presses its dry hayed hand against
the heatworn hills. Comes rain,
not much, but enough, and every
thing changes. The empty ground
between the oaks rises up in small
jade blades like outcast serpents
thrown out from a spit of seed.

This is what stills the season to move
me to take notice of what notice may
take me. It’s always been so. Some-
thing comes, something leaves, and
we take note of it all. Stones float
off to the stars and owls perform
rituals as rabbits pass in sacrifice to
canid gods the whole night through.
It has happened this way for millennia.

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Sleep evades and you come to mind,
a small empire of remembrance pushing
through an oaken space between what
takes and what keeps. You are leaves
and grass and clover, a stealth of saxifrage
wheeling beneath Orion and a cowering
crustacean that slips over the far horizon
to sting a morning not yet bleeding light,
full of rain and green and sweet forgetting.

Joseph Gallo
October 22, 2010


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