Number 69: blessing before the fall

After this hot, dead summer,
you will have a beautiful fall.
Stop by the side of the road and
let leaves falling take you falling back
alleys, market in the morning
on a Saturday, sausages and
wheels of cheese, English and
Italian, mixed with the smell of olives
in barrels, green copper dome of the
old church, women in shawls and
boys in the street.
The sky is clear and blue.
Don’t worry. The rain
will come to comfort you,
bring with it old familiar ghosts
of steel mills which haunt the corrugated siding,
rest in the rust, reflected in puddles
gathered in the broken sidewalk
by the bookshop, record shop.
Old buildings and their ceilings; look up
at the molding still flecked with gold paint,
chips falling like leaves on scored wood floors
falling in light from high windows,
light through the rain.
Drive through the rain
on roads that wind
the way the roads don’t wind here;
find the apple orchard where we stood in the blue dark
on the edge of a night that was falling.
I saw you move among the trees,
your black form crossing their black forms,
your arms reaching to their branches.
Chill in the air; the hard fruit I picked,
good only for cider.
I’ve held it all this time,
clutched it to my chest
through hot dead summers, now
the press, last draught
all of this
a sharp scent rising.
Let it catch in your throat,
it’s all right,
the sting will ease
into a beautiful falling