Clouds Swell Out

The finale of fall hangs in yellow clusters.
You can't muster

the drive required for potent acts—to hide
like the cat who eyed

each skittering leaf and churring sparrow from
a dark sanctum,

frozen, invisible, dumb—such is your will.
The world is ill

with demands it can't meet; hence, the crickets'
deaths, the rosettes

of rot, the dusky clusters, and flourishing worms.
All this confirms

your wish to divorce yourself from the vista
and phenomena

of autumn which looms from raw branches a dark
afternoon. The stark

landscape deepening its shadowed dales cannot
stray a lot

from the invincible doctrine, though owls moan
misgivings. Alone,

you watch a jet's contrail zip open the sky
and the high

clouds swell out like huge, snowy hearts disgorged.

Copyright © 2002 Julianne Buchsbaum All rights reserved
from Slowly, Slowly, Horses
Ausable Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission