I have to write this quickly
before the flare dies out
and day brings back my night.
A burning autumnal light
backlit by a harvest sun.
This melancholic flourish
before the fall of garden gloves.
I wonder more and more
about the second life of plants
overgrowing toward their end.
I wonder about the stillness
where hardly a leaf is disturbed
from where it sometime fell.
The death flare rises up
in me like earth’s fire.
It is my one moment of lucidity
before the poem dies out.

With half the light burning
and half the light in shadow
my throat turns blue
and three ash marks
appear on my forehead.
My eyes become stones
on my way through the earth
and my fingers grow roots
that look like other hands.
A snake encircles my spine.
Everything in me comes alive.