autumn 3000

1
certain people speak
almost tenderly
of college
and wrestling with
the tough questions, all in caps

beneath bricks and bells
the draft under the dormitory door
came in autumn
when the leaves were sweet with dying

2
from Fundy Bay
the birds are rising now in waves
the nights
will get so quiet
the foxes grow thick and white

3
in the autumn
we ate bags of apples
we talked of original sin
and the stars hung in the cool air
the nights so early
would come, and these points in the dark
we would wrestle all as one

4
lifeless now the low trees seem
standing quietly naked
in the autumn, and the bears
hum like slow cookers
slight rattle to the lid, these
dormant questions hug our bones
like fat, though
well we may understand
the motion of our tipping land
and the slant of sun
god like this, big as we can
and for death accounted in this turning plan

so birds will rise all day in waves
this emptiness that's left is left
in migratory strides
'till night's stars far off are clear
like atoms of us, a north Canadian beach
for winter to be left empty
and this matter is but emptiness at heart

5
but sill
we will
wrestle and slither as penguins
on antarctic snow to open water slip

sea lions under ice shelves watch and
the toughness and fury
of all dying things is the red of that fiery cold water,
the blood running like sap escaping maple shoots,
yet emptying will have the air
all full with flight of wonder and to where
to where, each fowl with its strange compass flown
their leaving but the filling of some other place

at the Bay of Fundy this first empty night
is delicate
as no other night, darkness
serenely holds its silence; each star singly
may be studied, each icy ave etched in veins on crystal snow;
the endless circle of
such holy beads need not affright

6
no more so than
such people
could think to fear
the far off flicker of their college years