M. Slotznick
OCTOBER. TURNING
We had come to expect, after all,
a little maintenance for the souls left
vibrant among the earth's shutting-down
millwork. We were nuts .. .
After acres, last Sunday, she started
everything, running, the minutiae of autumn
unlacing from our feet into the valley,
golly, down went the chestnuts, down
went our little red bearings, please pity
a foreign industrialist's shoestring comprehension- .
Less and less hums. I remember essentially
her clarity; her sienna sketches of the hereafter;
the tick-tick of chestnut twigs splintering
into her chestnut design; and her old man
sprocketing down the slope, apparently disconnected,
after the fact, much of the time.
