AUTUMN IN THE REAR VIEW MIRRORDriving through autumns red and yellow dreamleaving as it comes road leaves kick up and float in the rear view mirror like notes of a Mozart sonata, before falling again like bits of paper, remindersof projects Ive started and never finished, friends Ive let slip away and the orange I couldnt imagine when I was green. Passing through the smoke of burning leaves, I am wakened to the stranger Ive become to myself since I walked away from a town between two rivers where I could hold earth and sky in my hand and every morning Meadowlarks sang for me alone. Now I ride my fugitive pony from quarry to cathedral, betrayed and benumbed by the god who came down to give us glory of flesh and the gift of sinthen ascended behind steel gray clouds, leaving me to choose everyday between hymen and hymnal, moon chalk and sun dust, scream and sobcarrying, like the wasp, my death inside.