“Fall in the Absences” & “Pittsburgh, North Hills, 1960”

Fall in the Absences

There are many winds the day
cannot discover, many lying quiet
in the archives, many unnamed.
Dawn might rend the blue expanse;
but noon-rumpled clouds
have crowded out landscape,
keels and ribs a cankerous gray
crawling along. Shadows of the garden
quicken like premonition,
then comes that gust like thick canvas
drawn along deck. Mexican sunflowers
tilt over the quarry tiles, petals crimped;
the purple buddleia, near dead in its damp
corner, shovels out a few late blossoms
as the red rose claws a final attempt
at glory. Far from the hurricane,
we stand at the kitchen door,
watching silver birch and ash
bend in fealty, homage, or, or nothing.

Pittsburgh, North Hills, 1960

The snow slowly graveled to slate,
the sky slate, too, except for the flame of horizon—
dawn promises unremembered, unmet,
that old-time religion of the hellfire sort.
We took childhood cold sober, little Antonys.

WILLIAM LOGAN’s most recent books are Rift of Light (poems, Penguin, 2017) and Dickinson’s Nerves, Frost’s Woods (essays, Columbia University Press, 2018).

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