Autumn is
savory incense:
some sort of floating spice
inside my head.

The change devours me
and I want it to,
need it to,

change everything.

After being close to death
there was, for a while,
an impossible rest,
all glitter and mist.
Nothing was too serious to fear
and nothing was serious enough, so
somehow I knew hope would
hunt me down no
matter where I landed.

That's the promise
of believing,
I mean, the
promise of
knowing.

The sky is one
operatic note,

a single shade of
clarity,

an inside-the-sapphire
blue.

Give me another dose
of that knowing—
a calm refined by age,
pious as the buck
rippling through
the shadows.

Though rambling like the
adoring template of Creation
and out of reach when
the heart slams shut,

Truth is always here
in the light and the dark,
in reason
and in madness.

It's the angel-speak
above the brawling chorus,

the unmoored moon
dragging too many secrets

and all that they told me
love was.

So what do I know?
Only that I know very little—
perhaps just a vain
blink in the void,

and that's fine,
I'll take it,

all is well

when the Source of
all wisdom
is here.


Patricia Joan Jones