Days when daylight
carries a touch
of night: the trees
late green with summer
whisper autumn    
as though the coming
season were already here

and I guess we have
reached the age
where loss makes a way
into every conversation—
friends, teachers
dead and gone—as if
calling it out

as if naming death
and its daily thievery
might somehow
make it stay away.

I’m almost
a child again:
The boogeyman
only comes
when you turn out
the light

but even with my TV
burning all night
I don’t sleep
so well anymore.

It’s like being caught
with the wrong thing on
for winter and nothing
else to wear.  For a while
I believed it was
the right-wing sickness
that had infected
my country.
For a while

I thought it was
just me getting
older: my parents
recently gone, taking
their kindness with them.

Now I understand
it’s been like this
all along: the snap and trill
of someone talking,
the tap of their good shoes
on the stairs

then silence—
with those of us left
unable to close our eyes
trying to find the hours
in which they once
had lived.