Autumn brings your sugar rain home again

coated in caramel and moss

the oaks and the walnuts

suck up the candy shine floss

I walk with you

our fingers cottoned with sap and twigs

and the lovely smell of fresh cut grass

wafts with the leaves breezing past

spinning devilish tornados

into a blacksmiths sooty sky

weathered by the ways and the means

our youthful skin burns with incandescent dreams

down this pebbled tar existence

beneath these trees of exquisite loveliness

I walk with you

impossible to express it all

without you to smile when I fall

into icy puddles of melted rust

we take the shortcut through the cemetary

of course we must tarry

 and out-loud wonder

at the age of these stones

and the men and women that lie under

for how long they must rot

before they are taken within

and shared with the very soil

from which they came

once again

I walk with you

on your left side

you on my right

as turkeys call and quails startle

the deer in the distance

outdistance us by a mile

the smoke of the earth

the vaguely sensual smell of burning

Saturday afternoons and the grip of a coffee spoon

the early morning sunlight across a bare cornfield

the sensation of weightlessness

when you are so much nearer than you are right now

but I will always want to walk beside you

into the sun

into the gloom

into the dark of the night

into the break of light

forever and everywhere

in this autumn thunderstorm

keeping each other loved and warm