Day 63

Fly into the darkness. The leaves are leaving the branch.
How can your voice not be heard again?
Are others willing to pick up the thread?
Once you played in the streets, a boy throwing a ball
for other boys. Fly fly fly. Difficult now to tell one street
from another: bombed-out buildings. An occasional bird,
whip of an engine. Cold is the wind. In an unlit room
someone picks up a pen. If the room is gone and the pen
gone and the poet gone and the the paper
taken up by the wind, will the poem still sing
among empty branches? Trees
lean into each other. The wood sighs. Rain
pelts the broken sidewalk. Winter is coming.