Life is running through me deep
tonight. I lost my keys again, this
day was a precious stone of light and
now, slippery as an old fisherman,
I am the parent for three boys.

Margaret is feeling Autumn too. She
found a dress so fine, yet as the hours
play our calamities over large
in our faces she leaves the heart’s
indignation below us and
our power is the power of love.

As with trees bits of us turn to
resemble fire and drop away, melt
with a fertile sea or mulch of forgetfulness.
Each bit shows a stinging, new nerve
but besides this expected discomfort is
upheaval deep as a spring,
brand new lives offered and accepted
in the trembling of an egg.

We have been changed. No Fall
has been so disturbing to the soul, not
even the myriad Octobers of our
innumerable separations can harvest
a decent trophy to compare with this,
our fresh temptations to panic.

The little asked of us is no more
or less than an invitation to become
giant, as if, for All Saints’ Day, we had
been freed from the one percent of our
minds that used to be so sure.

New Orleans
10-31-86