The damp snapping wind ices the bones / through to marrow.
Puddles from silver rain earlier in the week / create a chain of lakes / along the moss-edged cement sidewalk — / a mottled white ribbon / stained with silhouettes of / dying leaves like dusty chalk outlines / at a murder scene.
Soon their shadows disappear as more / and more descend, burying the decayed / charcoal shapes beneath soggy piles, / as though remembering summer’s splendid / verdant canopy is too painful to recall.
The stern old trees rise from the / blotchy grass, shaking their black / limbs like fists against the cold / bitter blue sky.
Canadian geese peck at fallen brown / apples near the sleek granite building. / Winter is stalking the campus.
Autumn begins with the same three / colors: green landscape, yellow /
leaves falling through a / gray afternoon.
—Notes from Ann Arbor, 2009
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