Dear November

 

Dear November,

It's mad easy to become lost.

You are so cold and distant, part of me is begging,

the rest of me a raised fist, cocked.

 

Everything inside me is in rivulets down a window

and it's moving,

dear November,

like a scared hare in the stalky brown fields. 

Dear November,

I think I married you once, had your child,

or came to your funeral every year wearing heartbroken black.

I was your dove, dear November,

and your crow.

Dear November,

I need to know that you remember me beautiful,

even if I turned dry as a page,

stale as a bowl of potpourri in a haunted house.

I am crying now, dear November

and December's smile mocks us both,

Cher Novembre,

mon triste bien-aime.*

________

*Dear November, my sad beloved

for Dverse Poetics for the love of letters. 

Hymn For Homeless Ghosts

 If I could lay hands on a visa 

issued by lost grandfathers--

some kind of ticket scented 

with summer dirt roads--

then I would wear a hat made of dandelions and leave.

The present moment

is just a rented room. 

Poor child, 

yesterday has vanished,

today was born already packing its case,

and tomorrow is asleep in a distant curtained chamber.

It was just a moment ago,

just a breath, when I was

new in the world and believed the world new as well.

Whose hand was on the door

that was closing even as it opened,

wearing the vanishing morning like fleeting fashion?

If I had a passport

made of more than shifting memory,

I would take a hired car

to shores where the waters say,

"Where have you been

delayed so long,

and why dear heart do you ask, through tears, 

                                                     to be told your own name?

_______________

for Six Sentence Stories, "visa". 

Music: Cesaria Evora Sodade