#jan bailey

And now the slow slide into autumn: the thinning crickets, the monarchs moving weightless among us like orange angels, the tight-lipped rose hips; the brown curl of aspen leaf, the bikes tossed willy-nilly on the schoolhouse lawn. Even the shadows slide, like blue cloaks about the apple trees. Now the mornings deepen; the meadow glints of scraggle weed and thorn and a russet splatter of barberry sweeps in among the spruce. September, like the hem of a dress moving easy through the grass, and we running alongside, tune our engines, whip- whine our saws, rattle the storm windows from the cellar, backhoe our wells, wrap our buoys in their day-glow dresses. We, running alongside, bent on keeping pace, our eyes focused on the road ahead, our ears thrumming.

The Solo The rank mud threaded her toes, she dug them deeper—keeping her balance in the stale pond—her cape of hopeless hair, the weightless arms lifting with care into second position. Minnows nipped at the frayed skim of her skirt, gathered and studded with little mirrors, this dancer of sorts, mute and disheveled, swaying her slack and scabby arms in the smoky air. All about she searched for singularities: a lone birch, one dragonfly among reeds, but everything she spied was paired or choreographed into groups of threes or fours—arching or supplicant, insensitive to her stare. Ducks spun, gulls reeled as a shimmy of sun slid across the water and settled to a stage of stars about her knees.

I lean into you and we are dumb with wonder, overcome by the scent and sex of it and nowhere speech and nowhere naming. And when your eyes calmly close and your breath deepens, I know that it has marked you there, that you are tumbling away from your rocky harbor, from your white sea, from your own white heart.