petrarch faked it too

autumn mouth

i unfurl.
and in so doing turn away from light.

darkness calls forth colors
unfamiliar
to a light-stressed day:
light pours down in day
and swells the seen things
with itself alone,

but at night,
like perfumes released by heat,
things radiate outward
in private display.
this is why it's stranger
and more filling to see
a racoon emerge from a dumpster
by the light of a sodium lamp
than the entire grand canyon
on a clear day.


the thing that never happened, that is, you,
i am able to mourn at night,
able to worship at night,
and to return to the stretch
of night-lit sidewalk, in memory,
where my mind broke its teeth
for love of you.

punch me in the face
o moon, o stars.
walk the corridor of my thousand doors
and allow them all to open on love.
let my essence
spill as if there,
the color, rustling, plural, near-tangible,
of devotion.