Late in the Day
—In late September many voices
Tell you you will die.
The leaf says it. That coolness.
All of them are right.
–Robert Bly
I am troubled as shadows lengthen under the apple trees in my yard. It’s a kind of princely trouble, associational, a problem from the back of the head. According to what little I understand, the problem has nothing to do with success or failure. It’s just something that uncoils in my eyes. Then I carry it away from the window and into my house where it rests, filled with transfiguring omens among the books. This unnamable iteration is like the many armed figure of Durga waving her axe, riding a lion over a mound of skulls–but it’s the smallest Durga in the world, small and yellow as the end of September.
Tenderness is not in the light. The air smells of fading chrysanthemums. I walk the dogs around the trees heavy with apples.
Fathoms down, walking beneath the waves. My long, informal apprenticeship.
Planet of the Blind 
You’ve touched a cord, a nerve. I know this and have never articulated nor read an articulation of it.
As always, I am awed.
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