A not quite transparent grey curls about October evenings,
between civil twilight and nautical:
as if ghosts new minted in that year,
loitered about familiar things,
made strange with absence,
waiting for a final mass to pay their dues
and be allowed to pass;

As if the year, sensing the end approach
clung still to the last brightness of the trees turned inward,
before setting out into the vast no-when,
where the daily turning of the days
into the spools of years remains uncounted.

What is it that rears up against this fragile measurement
to harvest phantom leaves from mist caught in
the fraying cavities of twigs?

In these moments, of trees and fallow fields exposed,
the ghosts of words forgotten return
to walk unbidden and uncanny
in the tunnels of the mind
and time itself grows pale with ancient dread.