leafless poplars

i point out crows to my son
patches of yellow through gaps

rolls of dark clouds
hurled over high dunes

tell him over and over
look--

a landscape of branches emerges
surrenders its leaves to novemeber

we follow sunlight
it spills from a crevice of sky

a copper burnish
in the heights of oaks

but dusk comes
and light diminishes into leafless poplars

grey on a knoll set apart long ago
because of its color of moonlight

among the pine shadows
like a fair-skinned daughter lost to fever