Wide and Shadowful

We don’t call for them. We don’t call this ache,

this falling feeling, this watching of leaves

as they fall redly mid-summer. The them

up there is the leaves, but who is the we

that refuses to call and ache and call

it so? Call it a lie, or call it hope.

I would be the sharpest flint among those

sober stones. No one could ever mistake

me. I have the eyes of someone who grieves

like it’s the last thing she’ll do: gray and grim

as the summer sky. See how I said she.

I am making me as wide and shadowful

as possible. I am clouds in the shape

of leaves, of honeybees, of echoes, ohs.

Sleep Machine

Leaves and honeybees echo their ease, or so

I dream. It’s finally raining, or so

it seems from the sound of my daughter’s sleep

machine, which forecasts more kinds of rain—rain

on a tent, rainy riverbank, white rain,

cozy rain, city rain, distant thunder—

than we have had all year. Tin roof rain plinks

and my daughter sleeps instantly; under

healing water, she is promised to sleep

for 11 hours straight. The rain blinks

on, then off. If I turn the volume up

slowly enough, will she sleep through my hope

lessness as well as all that sun? When fall comes

will that sum be as balanced as it seems?

None the Sweeter

No sum is ever as balanced as it seems.

Nothing is truly tradeable. Fine. But

I wanted autumn’s numbness and I got

it, mists and all, mellow poppies and dreams

that dim but never fully end. The sun

says it’s doing its best, but it’s lying

so low that there’s almost no rise to its run.

I watch a slow bee slope toward its dying

there in the bed of cold cabbages (sai

to taste better after a gentle frost).

But the timing is tricky. My own bed

is freezing, and my sleep none the sweeter.

It’s either too late, or I’m too bitter

for sugar’s mouth. For even my own taste.