Ten Minutes in October

Heat for the senses, the added light

of backyard birches

flares

in prelude to bareness, to the coming silence

before the music of icicles and the ping

and crack of frost on gates

and outer doors.

A day like this, if one took time,

the questions that would rise

would be the kind we like most for answers

not needed - which vision

most allures? gold leaf in thousands

to shimmer branches; variegated

like batik on grasses below;

or the single one

after another

slipping down . . . the letting go

without a sound.