—after Wolf Kahn

The house hides in dusk’s spangled purples.
It’s hard to see such colors, capricious
tones barely there once night has almost
sucked the light from the forest.
And silhouetted trees rear up
as I walk, interrupt the horizon,
their dry leaves muttering imprecations
in the magenta gleam of twilight.

You have gone and I must be careful:
the path has faded to mere shadow
and I can no longer understand
the exuberance of a leaf twisting
in the breeze. How does autumn tangle
everything so elegantly, as when crimson
replaces the decorous sheen of green?
Such willful ambiguity. I walk steadily.
The soft retreat of chlorophyll asks useless
questions. The mother tree sleeps
and misses the violet whoop of fall,
the overlapping dive of it all.

By now night has stolen
twilight’s indescribable glow.
Our house has quietly slid
into an atmospheric blur.
There is nothing more to see.
My darling, the violet has disappeared
and I’m not yet home but I can still feel
the brittle slump of frost behind the trees.

©2009, Christine Klocek-Lim

Christine Klocek-Lim’s work has appeared in Nimrod, The Pedestal Magazine, Lily, The Quarterly Journal of Ideology and elsewhere. In 2006, her poetry was selected as a finalist for Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. Her Web site is November Sky. Two of her poems appear in our other seasonal anthologies: “First Crocus” is in the spring collection, and “Cicadas” is in the summer collection.

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