now one
by one the stars release
their brightness to this dark

mantle of
leaves, to this slow
rising through
abstraction of the quiet

details of
a tree, the textured
torso of

an Oak, the golden
veins of Autumn's
parchment, the feathered
throats invisible

to your eye that signal
the coming of those first
long shadows, a stroked

silence waking
to song, to a flight
of syllables finding
their way into the white

sky of a poem, the deepest
portals of

Your hearing . . .