from Everyone Gets Out of This Alive

Frost on the soil      Fire in the leaves
The trees explode into tongues of flame
to say farewell to summer     

And out come the tourists,
and out come the wolves,
and out come the foxes

dreaming of their teeth
in the necks of the hares     

O bright splashes of cold October light!
O firegold jewel in the sky! Cider in our glasses,

rabbits in our orchards      Let us pray     
Let us holler ‘cross the river,
hear our voices willow from the chilled mud of its banks

The vast, great white death is on its way
and you know it,          and I know it     

The water will be a raging drunk yelling
at an apparition      The ice will come
and the lakes will freeze
and the mighty Merrimack will hold silence     

Temper the river until spring thaw
and the streets will all break apart    

Chasms of asphalt      Chunks of rock
see fit to impede our past     

In the barbershop on Central,
Roland will say
an infinitely repeating number of times

this year, my God,
it’s as cold as it’s ever been

and remind you he’s lived here damn near 40 years     
Abdul will laugh and sweep up hair clippings from the floor     

He’ll offer up a paper cup of weak coffee
reheated from yesterday’s brew,
and none of us will accept,

but here I am once again,
getting ahead of myself as always,
racing toward the ending

without taking the time
to properly celebrate
how we even got here     

Always in a hurry    
Always in a rush     

So come, sit with me a while,
dear phantoms, sit with me
on the frozen concrete steps of Arms Park     

We’ll gaze at all the stars
that aren’t obscured by the bridge
or made invisible by the blinking
red and green as jets make their approach     

Drink bitter coffee out of paper cups,
take a walk along the water’s edge,
dead leaves cracking
like cobblestones beneath our feet.

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