Each leaf yellow though it's not the sun
--all Fall a branch
bringing mountains and the dark

slowly east and from your porch in back
as if it's not some raft
but light drifting off --one small tree

pulling the Earth to safety, gathers
a circle as leaves have always fell
exhausted :each evening you watch the sky

curl faintly brown, clouds
break across your arms
but where would you fly

holding up these leaves
their tree doesn't remember
can't hear the hovering calls

and though it's not the sun
slowly your heart lays down
as every tear --the backyard heavier

and you will rake all night
dragging the Earth to the dump
or some dead bird dripping along the way.



You focus the sun as if its wings
will open, leap into the light
--I can't see a thing, not yet, my eyes
still clinging to the flash
I'll need when it's all over

and though my eyes in the picture are open
I never saw the sun alive
--it never jumps in time, your camera
full, sleeping now on its back.

You undress and all these feathers
drifting past on waterproof paper
face up under my hand --further down

there's snow even on the fence
--I can't see the flakes, not yet
but what other light
would leave such brittle tracks
to follow, my eyes cold
torn like pockets at the bottom
and stars are falling out the sky.

You undress :calling in
more and more sun under my hand
the light feels like light again.


Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. Rafts (Parsifal Editions) is his most recent collection. Family of Man (Pavement Saw Press) is scheduled for Fall 2008. For more information, including his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” and a complete bibliography, please visit his website at www.geocities.com/simonthepoet.