All Saints’
Caravaggio’s face in the sunken pumpkin.
Bulbs rotting in the damp garage—still
no hard frost. Lamplight, low moon.
It’s that time when corners deepen
and the frame won’t stay untilted.
A tendency toward extremes, one doctor
diagnosed. It’s just that out the window
stands a row of white globes too long now.
Too long. Why do you keep looking?
When the child asks, of the man
in the moon, who cut off his head,
who says turn away, turn away from that.
A mystery of faith, as it were,
that the light indeed returns.
