CALCULUS
Fall is the season of remembering
the leaves last flame to dying
dry and brittle as old hearts
it takes an act of will to recall what
had been before our attempts to warm
against the coming cold
truth in fragments
change over change
I keep coming back
(they keep poisoning me
I keep coming back)
returning
like the next dream
no thought of time
but time enough
I suppose
change in me
over change in you
we are what we leave behind
an old fedora
a knit tie
photos of forgotten people
notes about birthdays
small things
that make clearer
a life whole
the trajectory of lines
never quite complete
TIME TRAVEL
The particulars of any random day
the wind off the water the quality
of light a certain time and place
a song a scent a wrong turn
the clocks revolve past all windows
or how someone’s name
stops you in your tracks
a sudden strange dance of time
and breath
or if you sit all afternoon
on a rocky cliff
overlooking a mountain lake
THE ORDINARY
The new moon suspended
across the darkening
high-pressure sky
another passing phase they say
surviving is what we do
I pass the cemetery
without stopping
the hospital without stopping
the church without stopping
the places
where silence is ordinary
surviving is what we do
not noticing
the circularity of lives
the passing of people
without stopping
surviving is what we do
where silence is ordinary
the ordinary is what we do
© Ann Privateer
THE OLD FARM
Collecting sad footsteps in the field
maybe a fortune in forgotten dusty carriages
in the old barn mice in the seat cushions
cobwebs stalls dry as dust
floating in streams of alternating sun
and shadow gray fences
undone horses all gone buried out back
I knew all their names
unmarked quarter-mile track
grown to weeds harness and tack
so brittle it breaks in your hand
only the willow is green and bends
there is no one here I knew
their names and all at once
we are gone or we are no longer young
the meaning of morning of sunsets
shifts it is autumn and I wait for that
pop full out suddenly wind and rain
the trees are bare
and we long for Spring
I ought to keep doing something
else but I’ve forgotten why
did I stop here where
did a whole day go why
is there always dark but
sometimes there is light
NOTES
No sign all summer
of cardinal or little wren even
the leaves wave quietly
the tv silenced
the politics of madness
the sudden return of birds
signals a change of seasons
on the table a book of poems
a book about birds
a magazine article says
one-third are lost
there are notes that we cannot hear
there are notes that we cannot sing