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In the Moment before Forgetting
A sudden burst of doves from a field...
a mottled feather dropped from the fold
of a letter... a low, disquieting rush
of wind at dusk, then a falling hush
among the trees... a distant flight
of birds dissolving into night.
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Upon Closing My Eyes
In these moss-encrusted corridors
of spruce and pine, the only stars
still visible are two or three
entangled in the tracery
directly overhead,
while elsewhere all is like the grave,
a deep unbroken darkness save
where muted pale diagonals
of intermittent moonlight fall
upon the forest bed,
collecting, every yard or so,
into an incandescent glow
among the leaves, like dimpling pools
of mercury, or lustrous, cool
footprints of the dead.
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A Clearing Through Clouds
As waves subsiding to calmness reveal
through the restlessness of reflected clouds
the cool interior depths of a pool,
so too, after all that a man might feel
in the course of a day: the coursing blood
taking its irretrievable toll,
the thirst and ardor and murderous moods,
beyond all that, there lies the cool
interior sepulchre of the soul.
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