Not on time...

Well, I'm behind  Not on writing, but on typing. I'll blame it on the holiday. Yesterday was devoted to baking vegan, almost gluten-free sweet potato-kuri squash pie, making a big batch of wild rice pilaf, whipping out my gravy making skills, etc. (Note that I hadn't even planned on doing anything for T-Gives.) And Tuesday? Well, Tuesday I was busy helping a bunch of youngsters create their very own zombie-vampire-werewolf-apocalypse theater production. To be continued next week!

Here's a rough sketch of a poem that isn't near done, but getting there:

LATE MIGRATION

This is the town where you used to try to feel at home.

And here, this is the street where you lived.

Empty. It's early. A Sunday, November.

Cars and bodies still tucked away,

everyone holding something in.

You see only a man, bicycling, white beard from chin to belly.

All the factories are collapsing, all the workers gone,

every warehouse left for squatters.

Own kid took off the moment she'd saved up enough to buy a car.

You left once you were sure she wouldn't come back.

Sky is slate today— no— steel. You can taste it.

Blood, iron, and ozone; there's ice on the way,

no immediate sun, but a light, diffuse—

more a property than an entity.

Where have the silences gone?

All hums energy captive,

   taut. The crumbled sidewalks vibrate

like great rough strings. You look up,

   for an overpass? Somewhere to place the blame

for your trembling.

This perfect purity,

   this glistening grey,

this industrial— or once industrial—

   mask of a day

is more— or less—

   than you can stomach.

Your saliva is stale bread

   inside the cavity of your mouth,

catches between teeth,

   you can't rub it out

with your tongue.

   From some corner

windfalls wash in,

   fill your nose, how strange

this wind! 

   Sudden living stench of applerot,

worms, vinegar, soft brown.

   Nutmeg in your mouth,

phantom of holidays that happened here once—

   broken bread and the blood of the Lord,

kettles and skillets, cast iron,

   mulled something,

fire long doused,

   the smoke and steam mingling,

chill warmth, this memory.

  You want to spit it out,

leave the nutmeg and the rot

  of apples and blood and snot

on this sidewalk collapsing

  into gravel and sand.

You want to walk, to bolt out

and forget outright all you brought back with you,

all you fought so hard, all you chalked up as lost,

but you can't run, you can't outrun it,

when it is inside you,

not carved in the pavement

or stenciled on boarded-up warehouses,

the ones where he used to work shifts, eight hours,

stagger back to you, midnight or so,

his breath whiskied, dinner cold.

You gave up waiting,

let him bang around downstairs alone.

He never once hit you

but a chair did, the one he threw, and coffee mugs, 

and felt-tip pens, and utterances cold as stone.

You are here now, not sure why.

Someone has died, not him, he's long gone,

a friend of his, someone whose name struck you,

flashed briefly, now burnt out— a satellite,

signal cut short, still out there, circling and dark.

Only good memories lose their grip.

Perhaps you lose your grip on them.

You reach the apple tree, leafless,

the corner of Wheeler and Frost. Draw closer.

The perfume fades. The branches:

grey upon grey. You want to run,

but not away. A whole life spent homeless.

The bicycle man. A chill in your fingers.

Leaves stir at your feet. They know as well as you

where one is supposed to go this time of year.