shot glass
title
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

Kurt Luchs


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Fall

Days grow short, like old people bending toward the earth.
Shadows, the advance guard of the night, take more territory.
Leaves let go and surrender to the great dying, the great sleep.
Wind sucks the marrow from the bones of the branches.
Painted turtles grow somnolent, sluggish, sink to the bottom of the pond,
enfold themselves in mud and begin to breathe through their skins.
The sky suddenly notices her age and applies a deeper shade of mascara,
one that complements the clouds nicely,
but like most of us she's just whistling past the graveyard.
The world, which is always trying to kill us in an offhand way,
decides to get serious about it and sends
a cold snap that bites like a dentist's drill and forms
fingers of frost that clutch at the bottoms of windows. Darkness, death
and eternity will have their say, though perhaps not the last word.