Photo by John Silliman
My Garden Pouts and Sulks in Autumn
Kenneth Zeigler
My garden pouts and sulks in autumn.
A sullen wind nips at the impatient feet.
Stakes once loved by leaves now abandoned
Stand straight and circumcised,
Marking the curve of the earth.
Children play in the streets,
Gaggling. Their voices
Cry out in the winter,
Staccato and intermittent,
Stirring the air like the wind,
Flying aloft and crazily
Like loose birds,
Some notes stifled on the muffling snow.
The wind blows scarves about our necks
And out again.
Open spaces in winter:
The naked trees beside the street
Stand sticklike like
Rows of broken teeth.
The river churns its brown swirls
Beneath the locks
And way off down the water
Lays its back against the swirling
Of a thousand miles of liquid mud
Balking at the dam.
The sea makes edges at the land
And then recedes
And back again.
Way out, a ship grabs at the waves, lurching.
Talk of you and me
Spins in my head.
I am alone.
Imprecise talk of you and me . . .
Noises insinuated in the dark
Form patterns only in the broadest view
A singular sort of mating
Like shadows that twist
Like summer night breath
Slinking through thickets.
We stood in the flattening dusk
Where my words spread flat
Like batter all around the planet
Seeking its own level.
So confused, I said, turning
To the fragments that have become my life.
I am not wise but have moments of intuition
In which I see myself specter thin
Not in flight but sailing as it were
Not in fixed motion with the earth’s stern turning.
Kenneth Zeigler
My garden pouts and sulks in autumn.
A sullen wind nips at the impatient feet.
Stakes once loved by leaves now abandoned
Stand straight and circumcised,
Marking the curve of the earth.
Children play in the streets,
Gaggling. Their voices
Cry out in the winter,
Staccato and intermittent,
Stirring the air like the wind,
Flying aloft and crazily
Like loose birds,
Some notes stifled on the muffling snow.
The wind blows scarves about our necks
And out again.
Open spaces in winter:
The naked trees beside the street
Stand sticklike like
Rows of broken teeth.
The river churns its brown swirls
Beneath the locks
And way off down the water
Lays its back against the swirling
Of a thousand miles of liquid mud
Balking at the dam.
The sea makes edges at the land
And then recedes
And back again.
Way out, a ship grabs at the waves, lurching.
Talk of you and me
Spins in my head.
I am alone.
Imprecise talk of you and me . . .
Noises insinuated in the dark
Form patterns only in the broadest view
A singular sort of mating
Like shadows that twist
Like summer night breath
Slinking through thickets.
We stood in the flattening dusk
Where my words spread flat
Like batter all around the planet
Seeking its own level.
So confused, I said, turning
To the fragments that have become my life.
I am not wise but have moments of intuition
In which I see myself specter thin
Not in flight but sailing as it were
Not in fixed motion with the earth’s stern turning.