Deborah Fass

Evening: Early Winter

House key in my hand
            I pause a moment on the porch.
The street is empty.
                                    Silent 
falling leaves let through branches
            a narrow view of bay.
                        Across the water

one by one in the dusk             lights
            dot the silhouetted hills.         Behind each
pinprick           each perforation
            of night           someone
must be calling out                
                                    I’m home.


Deborah Fass has been featured on NPR and published in journals including Terrain.org, Wild Roof Journal, Plant-Human Quarterly, Heron Tree, and in anthologies including Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California. Her chapbook Where the Current Catches won the Island Verse Poetry Prize. A Chatham University MFA graduate and Academy of American Poets Prize recipient, she spent many years studying cultural and literary arts in Japan. She lives and teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area.