Halloween 2009

Leaves are falling
and soon the maples, oaks and elms
will all be gray and bare

and the wind is gray
at my feet, swirling
debris to the gutter

of the street,
soon to be
crystalline white,

and the day grows empty,
clouds dissolve, and the wind,
resolving highs and lows,

pushes here, then there,
formless and aimless,
and I meander to

whatever it is I yearn for
but soon forget,
and now it’s dusk,

and the wind
dissolves whatever
remains of resolve,

and I turn back to the house,
somewhere in my past,
there in the valley

of the sheltering hill
where once there blossomed
so many flowers and other living things.