If you look up quietly enough
so that the world, in its bang and bluster does not know,
you can see the Aspens pen an empty sky.
Fevered, first, swaying in some love note like a swoon —
yellow-scratch-and-yellow —
giddy, among the gangly flush.
then quietly, in the adjacent grove,
not steps out from the end of day,
the final words of an aching goodbye:
curlicues in burning orange, I’m sorries
in a shaking hand with storm clouds
on their way.
I see it now: We are more alike than men and men,
more ups and downs colliding in us both,
our lives told together in a day.
