Bravely
as the light flies
I tell you how my heart breaks
for one red maple
on a hill in South Carolina
and for a redtail hawk—
how autumn tramped that country
in dirt feet, keening
like an old song. I reason

that things are most themselves
in autumn when at four o'clock
the sun from high cirrus cuts
tall poplars.
Their yellow hands holding the blades
they abide the time
over farms
and country roads. My hand

translucent as I
write by this window—
tendons slide along the knuckles
gently lift the net of veins
where the life goes home, and I recall
how soft your eyes are sometimes. If

my character likewise
should be exposed
it would be found a somewhat overbloomed
perpetual. But if found at best
I think I could hollow out my bones
wait with the redtail hawk
in a known spiral upwards, all
utterance suspended. Glaciers snap—

quite suddenly
my hair is white, a hawk cries
westward.

[Published in Weymouth: An Anthology of Poetry Edited by Sam Ragan, 1987]