The clouds overhanging the horizon are the color of coal, and…
Walking into Winter
Death is opening the paper hearts
of the milkweed, unclasping hands
that held their secret
all summer.
Coated and mittened
against November-cold, I ease
along a hillside path and listen
to the rustle and sift, the small talk
of tall stalks in the wind:
they are shaking out their seeds,
they are lifting their children
into thin air
on filaments of light—
small galaxies
wheeling into the world, each
with one tiny seed-heart
asleep, for now, in the center
of its bright basket.
Tomorrow, the rain
will rinse the empty chambers,
will wash these hollowed bodies
and slowly lean them down
into the fallow field
of winter, that dark cradle
of every beginning.