A poem for autumn

Grief

Hard wings at the heart

beat to beat to beat within:

a buffet of feathers a buffet of flesh—

the buffet of fire, of a rising wind.

A cold wind redolent of the cold must of old loss

sways the curtain wall of the body

side to side to side on the structure of the spine.

To seem a firm tower is only illusion.

Pain-sharp vertigo is the tide

that rocks and wrecks…