There’s silence in the house at summer’s wake.
The last leaves fall in one night’s wind,
the mice are eaten, and the cats begin
a rumbling sleep. There’s nothing much at stake.
It’s not quite cold enough to stoke
the furnace, and the neighbors never seem to mind
if leaves are raked. I’m staring through a blind
at less and less beside a cooling lake.
I keep forgetting that this absence, too,
must be imagined. What is still unknown
is still beyond me, as with you.
The mind is darker, deeper than a windblown
lake that tries to mirror every hue
of feeling as the season takes me down.