The second of "The Lauds."
"Crisp morning of the harvest, starch gone out of strictures.
We oven our abundance, surreptitious jubilee
of heathens, count them to infinity.
She left nothing in the wake of nothing as she left.
Loved ones stood in place, a modest and predictable,
unceremonial departure--
deporteure.
How custom chance reflection, worthy of Narcissus,
bones of face in frigid water, protection of the principle
past living daylight.
Everyone goes home sad with nothing to look forward to.
Ephemera casts brave and beautiful shadows
just before we walk beneath and through them.
Sunlight broken lacily by lustrous
leaves thinning to pair Autumn's Titian color of a mother's hair
light as the sun's diminuendo softens happiness.
And cool white evening pauses so the ribbon birds softly
breath test presence amidst softest
place, one after the next in form
of speaking gesture via tonal piece
onto the waves of one another, all growth gone mild,
all altruistic penance blind with
thought until the jade of lustrous life
is settled in the heart again with the illusion
of sufficiency implanted where the loft brushes the ceiling
and the tenor chooses grief over contentment.
You believe contagious here in heaven at its quiet-most.
Hard work done beyond the daylight.
And a fire and open pit, the dazzling jamboree
of flittering light to talk before.
Be warm together, hold a mug of tea,
explain the stars back to the selves,
arriving and disintegrating and evolving
in the mantric bowl of summer near the head of speech,
a dazzling crackle amid quiet and the few birds
just before we sleep.