1.
Last lingering limns of autumn,
her skin the florid color of leaves
slowly, beautifully, suffocating.

The deliberate way she sheds
her garments, impervious to moving time;
heading her body’s grave contralto

The perils of flowering:

abscission

2.
Homiletic hymns of snow,
paying reverence, draping our world
with her somnolent chords.

The foreshortened perspective
of separate bodies in the white.
Sometimes, I pretend this loneliness

is little more than abnegation,
artistic faithfulness to the season.
Communion with the barren trees.


3.
The night after first snow.
Always, new clarity; always,
exceptional difficulty.

This hard, clear expanse
which is the impossibility of life.
The liminal, frozen, garden of stars.