Far From Home

​the fall visited me again
this year, as it said it would
as everyone said it would.
I went on being a vacant star among
the denuded maple branches.
shirking my duty to generate light.
get lost, I said to the navigators
fuck all of you.
before the druids built their
alchemic stone playgrounds
there were no seasons;
the snow was a thing and so
was a blade of grass.
you could see them together
if you liked, lying down like
lion and lamb. there was no need
to shiver, to walk off into
the biting dark. since then
everything has been pulled
apart, forced to live in separate
apartments. if I am not whole
in speech and being
the clocks are to blame.
there was a time when
time didn’t matter—when
the sun shone whenever
you wanted it to. I was fortunate
to have a pocket full of
pebbles then— no one to
tell me they were not gold.
these and similar thoughts
occur to me when I am
far from the memory
of home.