I'm going to read some newer poems.
I'm going to read these first four
poems all in a row with hardly a pause between.
They're four separate poems.
But somehow, I feel a connection between them.
The first is called "November."
"I open the door, the first cold air.
And behind me, whatever I leave.
In November, the first snow, the first change
from color, this new stillness.
A dark-haired girl, we found each other.
I wanted to touch, to enter her, to believe,
as our minds jerked together.
She was all.
Though doomed, it would have been once
and could never be canceled.
Night, whisper my grief that slinks against the cold.
Dreams and the silence behind them,
the ringing silence in whatever space we are."