Parthenon West Review

Julia Levine

October

Now the geese are crying for the falling year,
grey fingers of their bodies blotting out the fire’s lips,

a delicate dark sweeping out the old sky,
the spirit’s erotic cloth falling in a slow crumble of stars.

Adrift and on fire, flickers return from the blue hills.
Moths tear open the fierce green lawn,

like directions to the next world, tattered into bits,
shredded handfuls thrown up to sun.

Remember last Halloween, when our neighbor called
the animals and archangels, one by one, across his doorway,

and in they came, to his wife’s hospital bed, frightened
but obedient, while he lifted their hands into hers.

Some things need to know they can still be touched.

Some things astonish us with the deeper names
of what was never meant to be

like the dream my child had of your guitar,
so certain that you’d brought the music back,

that she woke and padded down the hallway
to find me, here, alone, sewing her black cape and gown,

listening to the strange lantern of the geese
passing on . . . .