Autumnal Sentences
 
1.
The wind turns hard at dawn and fights the clouds,
a roil and tumble in the clearing air.
 
No steady hold --- the season trips and slides
a half-day nearer winter, then falls back
 
on summer grass. The day is many days.
 
2.
The muskrat lingers in the mist,
tries out titles, fumbling
one after another onto his essay:
 
Downstream from the Silver World
Three Methods of Untying Water
Millions of Gnats
The Day Muskrats Grew Large and Terrible
 
3.
Nothing else? someone asks the final poem.
 
Rain began to fall.
 
And?
 
Birds on a branch huddled and fluffed,
flotsam washed ashore.
 
And? And?