Autumn in the Rear View Mirror

Driving through autumn's red and yellow dream, leaving as it comes road leaves kick up and float in the rear view mirror like notes of a Mozart sonata, before falling again like bits of paper, reminders of projects I've started and never finished, friends I've let slip away and the orange I couldn't imagine when I was green.

Passing through the smoke of burning leaves, I am wakened to the stranger I've become to myself since I walked away from a town between two rivers where I could hold earth and sky in my hand and every morning Meadowlarks sang for me alone.

Now I ride my fugitive pony from quarry to cathedral, betrayed and benumbed by the god who came down to give us glory of flesh and the gift of sin then ascended behind steel gray clouds, leaving me to choose every day between hymen and hymnal, moon chalk and sun dust, scream and sob carrying, like the wasp, my death inside.