battening down

It's a sunset so pink you'd be forgiven

for thinking summer never left you

stranded on this seashore. Nevermind

it's November and your nose is numb,

embittered with windwhip and a lack

of anything rotting. That part's done --

the seaweed rug swept itself back under

a roar of white foam, the fishbones lost

their sunstink, the air itself is dead dry

enough to draw noseblood sleeveward.

//

Walk home the long way in the gloaming

and it's quiet. Even leaves have lost their

crinkle underfoot, offer only sodden shush.

A limpwinged goose pecks at pebbles on a

browning lawn, too weak to V up with his

southerly brethren. No more terraced

tourist neighbors to halloo, but you can

peer into their glaring windows newly

barenaked behind high hems of hedges

shivered down to creaking cores. Spy in.

//

All week long you've been alone and felt it

worming through you, the panic pulsing

fat squirrels into treetop squabbles, the

dizzy rhythm of daydrunk wasps over

groundrotted crabapples. It scrabbled you

into your firming garden soil to bury

bulbous hopes of green growth before

your windows glaze with rime. You were

almost fooled by those heataddled days,

the sweatstuck sweater musting underarm

//

but you've known this corner of the globe

long enough to read the lifespan of light

by how it hits your eaves. Soon, you'll cross

your threshold, sip gunpowder tea and build

a layer of creosote in your chimney. It's tragic

only if you let it trick you, all that death,

into thinking nothing good can happen

in your sleep. Tonight, you'll pull down all

your winter quilts and make yourself a nest

scented with sachets of last year's lavender.