October

Jeff Burt

October in the oaks,
long-slanting light,
cold caravans of rain roaming
through monuments of marble sky,
mist lingering in leaves,

all life luminous, filtered,
like barn-dust swirls in sun-slats,
moments of forgiving the memory
of the stinging sentence, the burning phrase,
the cutting word

and walking the land,
the sacred land,
and breathing into,
and one with,
the sky.