for the last time of the season,
i light a candle in the stone lantern
and watch it puff a ghostly aureole
over the memory of a garden.

for memory remains untouched
and implacable even as darkness has claimed
the path and clouds flow moonward.
cedar shadows melt into black,

and blackness strokes the window.
this is the exact place in the poem
where lately i run out of words..
the face in the glass seems quiet and cold as the moon,
grave with misgivings, brushed
on the blankness of a page,

unfinished and caught in history