november sutra composed in october

calculus of loss: two plane tree leaves yellow-brown
each curled like a hand sinking in the puddle on
the corner below the stop sign

descending chromatic bass line in E minor the
silver flute discharging the tune the Willamette
swirls frigid beneath the Steel Bridge

I tell you goodbye each afternoon the clouds the
blue sky the pine trees draining through the blinds &
question myself if I mean it

so we talked about death your death just the gray
speckled stones beyond the window eaves-
dropped & an empty gray sky

to my right as I walk the apple leaves are rust to
my left as I walk the hawthorn leaves are rust a
waning moon will rise bone-white

by evening—it’s easy to say the self is an
abstraction until that self peers through eyes seeing tomorrow
through a west window glazed by

sunset & lights in the sky you say the international
space station sinking nearer & nearer earth &
then not even rocks not even absence

not a photograph not a snow drift not a white house
the plane tree at the corner sheds a brown leaf to concrete
large as my outstretched hand

 
Jack Hayes
© 2015