Putrid as a corpse, the stink of the gingkoes joins

the disfigured leaves haunting our stoop, but who

recalls what tickled the pumpkins into laughter?

Come these the darkest days of the livelong year,

rimy rain from another grey nothing could sink us.

We should keep indoors, bundle ourselves together

yeasty and unsatisfied in the yellow light flickering

over the litter of our kitchen table. It seems magical,

the silent way that words decide things despite us,

neither because this is the beginning of the world,

nor the end, but because it is a dismal morning in

late autumn, year’s end already shading the horizon.

Remember, November is all forgetting. We don’t know

quite what to say as we hide today from these skies,

hoping to sleep our way into something we’ve lost,

a realization, something the kids may never know,

because we could not teach them, never learned for

ourselves, everything our hidden stars ought to mean.