november 1 (written last autumn)

The fabric of the world is stretched and frayed
like coats from thrift store stockrooms.
Cobwebs of cloud hang over the sun
and my attic is empty, but won’t be for long.
Tired eyes are blinking today, roving through the air,
over rooftops and down alleyways.
Weary lines of sight linger
in the garbage cans and crevasses in stone walls,
in the space between the shingles,
in the place between two leaves
rustling in the autumn wind.

Last night, I saw them –
in the cemetery,
in the woods,
on the roadside.
I saw their pale limbs
and heard the sound of phantom heartbeats,
their arms wrapped around solid living people
and their songs joined with quiet living voices.

Right after sunset,
they grabbed each other’s hands and started running
through the young night and the moonlight and the spicy smell of smoke.
They all felt alive, the living and the living-for-tonight.
They rode on broken carousels and spun their broken carriage wheels;
They tamed horses made only of bone.
When they found a dead fish on the beach, they threw it into the sea –
it stirred and flapped its flippers, took one dive and disappeared.

The whole time their hands were joined
and their feet were dancing,
their eyes beholding,
their warm blood flowing,
flying and falling deep through the dark.

The chance seems always to end too soon, for them.
I saw it, the midnight embrace,
on the shore,
on the gravestones,
on the tailpipes of morning.
I saw them hold so tightly that
they almost dissolved into each other.
I saw the fish skeleton wash up on the beach.
I saw them cry.

Always was that heartbeat sound,
rushing in with the wind
and the ticking of a clock
in somebody’s unraveling pocket.
I softly heard the last whispers of the year,
The pale limbs growing paler by the moment, entreating
The heartbeat-holding ones to live the year out,
to live and cry and laugh and scream and wait.

I saw the last embrace
As the pale ones started to fade
And midnight swooped in on the wings of a swallow
with a golden pocketwatch grasped in its beak,
the minute hand broken
(that was a triumph).

And then nobody slept,
and the dawn came in fog and in cinder.
Now everybody’s eyes are tired;
Now everybody’s ears are ringing;
Now everybody’s hearts are beating –
But I can’t hear them when it’s light out.

I hear the saints are rising, and
I know the pale ones are waiting.
I know the living are ghosts today.