After Reading Charles Wright

A final hour of sunlight. Early November
on the backs of crickets, the garden bare
but for the peppers that still bloom, somehow—
ajicitos and serranos, a thick-eared poblano.

Poblano: del pueblo. Of the village, the people.

Of the people, by the people, for the people:
words plucked from war’s dark wind—
gold-veined, brittle and blotched
as the poplar leaf that flits from my hand.

Where will I come to rest? Where will we?
Of what use our years?

A cloudless, azure sky. Wood smoke
in the air. Long shadows, tongues of night.