i.

transition to fall is subtle here
colors don't happen on the outside of 

old cedars and ancient oaks
but nature's way is a kind of wild humor
everything is felt, not seen 

the shimmered heat of brown and yellow
and today a raucous wind is as welcome as water
after eighty-nine hundred-degree days
an unrelenting friendly state, texas

where hell never freezes 
and heaven is the water in a highway mirage

ii.
think i'll start writing that musical now.
the one i have talked into existence
assuming grandly that if thought indeed becomes reality
it's so very there already
i feel so terribly alive in that thought

iii.
a bright windy day 

after so many days immobile with heat
so maybe it's time to kill off somethin'
to celebrate a new beginning

chop down a tree maybe

a weird subtext to the brilliance of this day 
like that not-so-subtle message

spelled out by the siblings
a couple of nights ago
withhold the prescription
when pneumonia comes
so she can die
she keeps saying she wants to die 
so, like, let nature take it's course 
the old person's friend and all that ...

i look up into the spread of these 300-year-old trees
that are still coursing life
that live with me and my100-year-old mother 
and the very idea of helping death 

sounds like nothing natural even to this parched earth 

sounds like martian words for immoral
and i have no rosetta stone for that

iv.
wind screams through the oak
in the middle of the dark
out here in my sanctuary
a dead branch crashes and clatters 

on the corrugated roof of the cantina
but the old ivy on the giant oak clings on

even now in the course of things

even at midnight  

green shoots are comin' on with no quit

spirit moving among the lichens and decay 
foahevah, my sistahs. foahevah.

for you

o dear God. there we were,
bent at our altars to life
being and doing the daily things
weighing our worth 

as if lives were made whole 
by luck or by sweat
when it was all grace.
were it not for mercy

we would have arrived back home 
as accomplished as two motes on a dusty sill.
but here we are
light as angels

dumbfounded by love
tripping over all of the rules of this life.
perhaps it was the plan
we had to come this far

to know how precious it all is.
even without another day,
it would be enough only to have
these moments

knowing who we are 
and holding hands.