Photo by Curtis MacNewton on Unsplash

 

Before the fire before the coming darkness, the feast:

            the donning & shedding of vestments:

                        the happy funeral of autumn,

                        the wine-gold sun liquid in the hollow,

                        each evening walk a sharing of the cup,

                        a stroll in Galilee where the beauty is

                                    in summing up, in gathering

                        of the year’s new past. And the farewell light,

                        so easy to construe the fable written in it

                        of a noble death, assumption easy as falling

                        asleep for a quick nap with dusk.

And with the trees relieved

of their burden of color, what was

hidden as sin, you see, you see

the lay of the land,

as survivors

see us in time, naked

as winter trees, what held us upright.

Mark Kirby, retired after thirty-five years in cyberspace at the Social Security Administration, writes from his native Baltimore.

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Published in the November 2019 issue: View Contents
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