Relay

October: daylight narrowing like an eye.

Now for the sunless season-long nights, gray

days of permanent twilight. But for now

big yellow leaves glow down

still parted and pushed like hair upon

black branches that release them,

glow up from the ground

they cover, making

a yellow place to pause in, invoking

sun where no sun is, beside the waterways.

To ease us in. High seasonal winds

risen like the tide crinkle

this inlet's foil surface west, against

its slow prevailing

current, away from the open sea.

Coot, hadn't you better

come out of that? How can he

stand it? His poor webs must be numb,

oak-leaf scallops clutching

footfuls of choppy ice-pale lake. He's not

dunking today, anyway. Other coots

paddle past, but the subdued

mallards, bills clenched to breasts, float

immobilized behind backwater-

windbreaks of tufted reeds

like Moses in his basket; at the thought of

the little orange leaf-shapes dangling down

under them in the murk,

my eyebrows ache.

Lobed oak, triple-toebone webbed maple-

tons of bushels of leaves the wind

dumps here along the long

canal bank, to be sunk deep or worked

into the floating faded mats of linden

leaves. One day soon, if they happen to look up,

these huddled ducks

will see through stripped black branches

as if through lashes

how the tall trees have lapsed,

exposing each

its crow or two and cold squirrel's nest

like a snarl at the crown;

will waddle past those drowned

footprints, pressing leafprints in snow:

webbed, with three branching veins.

Soon. And on that day

an owl's amber eye, if you can ever

catch it, will show you the only yellow

light left in this world. Sun

into leaf; sun to moon to owl-

glare. November's heavy lid, lowering.