ROMANTIC INTERIOR

Wind rips splendor from the trees
and lays it at our feet.
Some of us hungry, 

some of us lucky to be upright at all.  
Season past sweetness.  
Stuck in the throat with a fork.  

A speck in the spectrum
spins into a wet little planet
studded with heartlust, 

flooded with pamphlets
for classes on how to forget.
Where Keats sees a reaper

asleep on the granary floor, 
her scythe set by quietly, 
wind playing games 

with the husk of her hair,
I see a dead squirrel.  
It’s the end of October 

and I don’t have a costume.  
Past lives clutter my closet
a long way from home.  

There’s a hole in the ground 
where my house used to be.  
A hole in my head 

where my heart used to be. 
I’m climbing a hillside,
a green patch of laughter.