Skimming the Surface

September, 1504
Piazza della Signoria

Naked David
of this new republic
this time the giant
so magnificent
and determined
that a Florentine law
has fallen at your feet
having loved your notions
and shattered in your beauty.

Evensong, Taos

Evening after evening
brings October, shhh, gentle rush
of lamentation,
inevitable, unstoppable,
even if we fall in our own tracks
October comes early,
departs earlier than the year before
as though it cannot bear the beauty
it brings to this place that it loves.
How many Octobers have been here, nameless?
Huge, ancient cottonwoods stand, patiently
waiting to tell their stories; in moving air, shhh,
bright yellow leaves shimmer,
turning this way and then that
like a thousand pears.
In the cemetery, Kit Carson
rests in dim light, two worlds
separated by wrought iron covered
in the fall vine, the scarlet and yellow leaves
nearly incandescent
in failing sun,
the field and trees beyond,
suddenly dazzling with lucid favor
from the last rays, and October melody, shhh,
breezes in and out,
swirls away from the blue shoulders
of Taos mountain past the Indians
in their pueblo.
Painted tourist chimes proliferating in town
bring the loneliness of another
close of one thing or another:
an affair, a season, never a beginning
when evening after evening,
October comes
inevitable, always unstoppable,
even if we fall in our own tracks
it comes, departs,
beating continually like the Indians drumming,
reverberations celebrating and then dying
along Taos mountain
like the cry of the owl in the field
and the call of the heart
reckoning with loss,
sustained by grace.