Sunday Afternoon Palindrome

They buy frozen orange juice, bread, eggs, then leave

Counting their change. Small brown sack balanced

Against her hip, she lags yards behind his shadow.

Keys and coins peal deep in his trenchcoat pockets,

Khaki cloth resurrected on this day of ransacked trees.

He lopes to the car, coattails snapping and talking back

At the wind-almost aloft, the lift of canvas wings . . .

Winter mornings, her students giddy from forecasts of

snow,

She would show their favorite movies, Pioneers of Flight,

Path to Kitty Hawk: animated bird-men leaping off blind

Cliffs and campaniles, courageous monks left blind,

Maimed, because their feathered limbs failed to echo

flight.

How the children cheered as the credits rolled into snow,

Anticipating the projector's gift of reversal, splintered

wings

Instantly whole could soar the crumpled adventurers back

To departure, their apparatus upswept from ravines and

trees...

Last night the clocks turned back, cramming winter's

pockets

Full with light. This is her dreaded season, long shadows

In the den by noon tipping the house off-balance,

Her garden dim and inverted, the gutters clotting with

leaves.