Monday, October 5, 2015

APHORISMS

Each painterly dusk, I again go
swirling past bunches of 
autumnal and warmly-
lit supermarket windows—

each flush with its very
own several little 

bottlegreen baskets of
chrysanthemum
plants—each, in turn, with its various 
stiff little branches reaching 

to grow 
stiffer—and each of those

branches—plush with it's own black-
licorice leaves curling
thicker and yet-thicker 
in the slow creeping cold.

And each leaf now defining its own unique plane,
angled this way or that—contributing 

to a quickening feeling of such 
immense depth! Until—
yes, it becomes positively too dense
to distinguish! And it's only

then that I begin to see—
each prodigious leaf

on each 
branch on each
plant in each window
has come—somehow

weaving its way 
up my chilly spine to my 
mind, where it might finally
alight and thus

show me—how it's still 
possible

to grow up
but never—grow old.