Cathedral
Stephen Massimilla
A smell of indifference
Lying in wait, in mind,
I tried to write
A person rarely kissed,
A sister touched by images:
A branching November
Tending to shade her hill.
Through leaf-threads
In the rake, past a scrupulous
Spider editing her trap,
Spirey shadows touch
The pith of me,
Because I did not hope,
Autumn restless at my feet.
The next day was a deeper dead.
It said nothing to me
Of redemptive metamorphosis.
What we are given:
Confrontation.
Grasping at grasping
The habit of facing up
To nature. Fugacity.
Bits of night,
The blue flame of a grass blade
Clinging to my boot-sole,
The gaudy shedding of an elm
Too tall, too cold to bend.
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