In a red November’s sunset mood
I move among the dead in this late wood,
old friends or family: a world gone by—
their dates, encapsulated, lifted high.
They shine around me, infinitely full
of what they were. One of them, a fool,
grins stupidly from distant ear to ear.
I’m silly as a boy when he comes near
with his loose tongue, those sassy lips,
a bag of tricks and well-worn quips.
One ghostly girl breaks down in silt,
her smell of mud, sharp taste of salt:
all shade and shadow, dangling vines
and roots that dig into the moldy, pine-
tar soil. It’s painful to recall her fleshly ways,
the lilting manner of her easy sway,
her snow-bright bloom, or how she balanced
in the high-wire winds I rarely chanced.
I walk among the long familiar shades—
progenitors, accomplices, and aides.
Like there, my father, in a sandy mound,
his love like water running underground.
He takes a quiet place among these dead,
these whisperers in my unquiet head,
who sift in currents, humming in the wind,
and almost without bidding come to mind,
small lights that shimmer, lead me down
this dusky path so thickly overgrown
I have to wonder if I’ll make it back
before the sun turns cindery and black.