and then came Autumn

she had made a portable world for herself
she has to keep her options open
isn’t the heart both chest and treasure?
isn’t the heart always ajar?

over the years she has gathered her words
she has sowed them onto the seasons
as she toils between tender and needle
on each page an ode to constellations

and then came Autumn

time to unleash the murmuration of starlings
time to shelter, here, the honeyed flight of a bee
as the wind starts to gather the leaves
one by one

like days
clustered in our memory, only just,
mimicking stars

that tell us, every evening, that far
is farther than it seems