country. Eloquent moral explication,
don't you think?
We dawdled over supper and the tele-
vision news, their father on his way back home,
our week's work
winding down. The pain was someone else's,
I've no claim to it. The pain
was someone else's. And the boy.
KARL KIRCHWEY
Leaf Season, Columbia County
Down such an avenue of red you came
three weeks ago today.
Here are the fifty different tints of he–
moglobin, carelessly
scattered across a muddy country road,
sufficient, through half-turn,
sacral glissando and pause, to have moved
the world on its foundation
that fraction which adjusts season and climate
toward the end of the year.
The sumac and the sugar maple light
your small face with their color;
the bending road forgets itself in blood.
o
rainy rose-gold prince,
lead us
to
kindness through the unaltered
kingdoms of innocence.
