Gone From the Boat, Far From the Ocean 2 (version 2)

Autumn ducked into the year
quickly
with cold hard winds

A chill in the air, these winds
out of nowhere,
anticipated but unforeseen,
just the way you left

Silent, bristling stranger
your face familiar, impatient,
cutting through broken silence
like glass shards
through worn gray silk

A momentary utterance
of the impending cold:
this inevitable barrenness
coming toward us

And you recede, your body gone
abandoned, like a cracked eggshell
your death, your nearly invisible birth

An added element: absence
something missing, someone

This singular dark day, subtracting itself
from a week flowing with golden Indian summer,
lone autumn day,
the trees suddenly deciduous

A reduction to shadows, of shadows,
of intangible nuance

The meaning of that look
in your eyes as you crushed her
hands in yours, no words granted

Only the machines sounding
clear notifications
of additions, of subtractions