The Whole Year of the Spider
Someone’s balmy hands were over my ears.
I stood in a room, waiting for, a way off,
the strings to fall. The maples dulled
and still branching from that dull house,
that receded in to frame. Even,
the road, night leaves backing the light
of each diminished face. That is one thing
and then another. Water birds broke into
the wheel of the attic, and turned and stole
for months. There was the sudden drop.
Delay. I took back everything I said
(strips of clouds, throw me from the window)
in order to say it again. Brown
and mottled leaves, I tried to unarrange,
into the familiar, wherever it landed,
and tossed them down, a tree skirt, a full skirt.