Fall

Something still humid and sticky in the air, 
even as summer plummets steadily into fall.

The fruit on the tree haven't had their season; half
still green and hard, the rest oversoft or fallen.

What of the world we used to know would you put
in a jar if you could? Before the sickness, after the fall?

Rain pelts the roof and the rivers rise. Roots push
out of the ground—outspread, they thicken: not fall.

We've lined up for shots but still hide our faces behind
masks; the moon wears a gauze of stars before it falls.

I'll write to you in every dream, fill notebooks with loops
through which we engineer escape before the fall.