And as usual, early summer seems already to hold, inside it,
the split fruit of late fall, those afternoons we’ll
soon enough lie down in, their diminished colors, the part no one
comes for. I’m a man, now; I’ve seen
plenty of summers, I shouldn’t be
surprised—why am I?

As if everything hadn’t all along been designed—I include myself—
to disappear eventually.

Meanwhile, how the wind sometimes makes
the slenderest trees, still young, bend over

makes me think of knowledge conquering
superstition, I can almost
believe in that—until the trees, like
fear, spring back. Then a sad
sort of quiet, just after, as between two people who have finally realized
they’ve stopped regretting the same things. It’s like they’ve never
known each other. Yet even now, waking, they insist they’ve woken
from a dream they share, forgetting all over again
that every dream
is private…

Whatever the reasons are for the dead
under-branches of the trees that flourish here, that the dead persist
is enough; for me, it’s enough.

The air stirs like history

Like the future

Like history