Power

Last night was a winter storm,
the kind with weighted ice-snow and winds
from the north--
the kind of winter storm leaving frozen shells
around power lines and tree limbs.
Not a good pairing, the two,
when loaded branches crack and tumble
in a glacial cascade of ice and sparks atop
electric lines, so power full.

That was the kind of storm we had last night.
The kind of winter storm that one falls asleep to,
its oddly lulling whistle of wind
seeping through window seams--
the sound of nature in extremis--
and waking in the morning to a breathless house,
and frozen vistas outside the windows,
and vacant, blank LED lights on clocks throughout,
no red and green and blue deathstare of time, now powerless.

It is only me this morning, and the dog, in the quiet
where normally there is muted buzz of electric surge,
and vented hiss of heated air, and gentle flow of time.
But now the house rests empty of energy.
Now time has stopped
in this house which I quickly scour for blankets,
knitted warmth, quilted fabric of memory and hours.
This house where--once life has been restored--
empowered, I will decide to leave the clocks alone.

Of a Mind to Rename Seasons

I don't know why it's called "Fall," exactly--
as seasons go, I mean.
Of course there is the literalness
of the word, "fall," littered on lawns
the way it is, these leaves of Autumn,
stuck on windshields of cars, and window screens, and on the bottom of shoes
as you tramp noisily through piles of
golden amber red
like some child from long ago kicking through the hiss of dying surf
somewhere far up on the beach.
Playful. At peace. A bucket for sand-castles, swinging innocently at the side.

Here is the grounded meaning of fall, then,
stepping through crunchcrackle of
dried, dead tree appendages--these ends of stems
gone to dirt,
compost fallen underfoot now with soil and worm.
Leaves that only weeks ago (days ago)
clung to life at the edge of existence.
Given up now. Given to ground.

And then there is the air, of course,
with temperatures dropping in a day, it seems,
falling to those comfortable, cozy layers of winter--
so there's always that, as far as the calendar goes--

But, still----"Fall."

I wonder why not "Rise," instead
(if we're of a mind to rename seasons).

Rise--like the sudden, startled flurry of geese
taking air over the pond down the lane from me, early morning,
wingtips gently kissing
unruffled surface of water,
finding lift,
and leaving only the smallest of splashes--like raindrops--
until the relentless beating of synchronized, supple feathers
pulls them into low sky just overhead,
slow, cumbersome, but aloft--heavy and honking, a group of them,
in the calm of the cool, still morning.
Floating and then flying
on currents beneath them,
rising steadily, until gone.

Or the woodsmoke curling from
sleeping rooftops along unbroken geometry of
blocksquare crumbling chimneybricks,
a gentle wisp of quiet, silver breath,
smelling of oak and maple and hickory,
warm and at rest,
smoke floating unseen upward, disappearing
into the orange of sunrise sky.
Gone.

Or the gray cloud of thicker, scalding leafsmoke,
choking the throat, the eyes to tears
at the funeral pyre of fallen leaves, detritus, a heaping pile
next door, still smoldering from the long day,
a drifting residue of cloud
rising upward--disappearing somewhere
like the handful of dry leaves
I close between clenched fingers,
the sound of snapping leaf veins and torn paper
until--palm now filled with dust--
I open my appendages slowly and feel the October wind
take it all away from me,
and what was once leaf
disapparates in a formless motion of air,
rising,
until my eyes give up
and it's gone.

My father died ten years ago to the day.
(What was left of him, the man I loved--first the man, himself,
and then the mind. It was slow.)
It was a cold fall morning, then, too--
early morning, well before geese and smoke from chimney and leaf--
when he was here and then was not.
It was the fall, of all seasons
(this season of empty ends)
when my brothers, and my mother, and my daughters, and I
took turns reaching into a box of cremation,
grabbing, one by one, a handful of the man in ashes
and holding him there, tightly, between fingers
clenched in the tearing Autumn wind
only to slowly unclench, as if pained to do so--

to open my hand
and to watch my father fly away from me,
an intake of breath through the distant trees,
one last time,
and then a final gust, a blast of cold
across the unbroken geometry of flatsquare cornstubble,
and his cloud of ashen dust

                    (as fragile as a leaf)

fluttering up, and up, dissolving, disembodied, lifted,
up, and further up, higher, a part of gray-sky evening now.
And then gone.

Rise.