Читать книгу Alphabet Year - Devon Miller-Duggan - Страница 7

And fall & the light tasting of good scotch, like

belief you don’t even need to swallow before it lights your tongue.

Catching up. Coming back. Cleaning off. It’s okay—you

dove fingers-first into the blue pool summer. Climb out.

Ends. Hinges. Folds (mountain, valley). Turning. Summer’s

fainting from her own heat,

grating her bare toes on sidewalks, self-abrading for penance.

Here the light pours like waking, even as it shortens. Dirt

inherits the leaves it fed.

Just as after harvesting, it’s good to cut things back to ground.

Kin to air all summer, your skin remembers separateness.

Limber all summer, your skin recalls contraction.

Much presents itself, absents itself—like family or

nerves shifting sequence—firing or frosting

or fluttering your fingers, your skin, leaves. Hinges all manifest in skin,

plain skin against the plain surface of shift—

quieting the way deer quiet before bending to feed. Air

rounds on us, carves us a cave to wear,

so wound about you—

too hungry for love,

unknowing what we knew, yet

voluptuary as eiderdowns,

weathering the bustle and turn,

xerosis of leaf and ground, then frost killing rot.

You can love your skin again because it requires you cover it,

zealous for keeping close.