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.
