The brief secrets are still here,

                            and the light has come back. 

The word remember touches my hand,

But I shake it off and watch the turkey buzzards bank and wheel

Against the occluded sky.

All of the little names sink down,

                            weighted with what is invisible,

But no one will utter them, no one will smooth their rumpled hair. 



There isn't much time, in any case.

There isn't much left to talk about

                            as the year deflates.

There isn't a lot to add.

Road-worn, December-colored, they cluster like unattractive angels

Wherever a thing appears,

Crisp and unspoken, unspeakable

                            in their mute and glittering garb.



All afternoon the clouds have been sliding toward us

                                      out of the

      Blue Ridge.

All afternoon the leaves have scuttled

Across the sidewalk and driveway, clicking their clattery claws.

And now the evening is over us,

Small slices of silence

                  running under a dark rain,

Wrapped in a larger.

From Buffalo Yoga by Charles Wright. Copyright © 2004 by Charles Wright. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. All rights reserved.