Gold Lingers

Peter Cole

over the lime
small full-moon maple where
nothing I can prove appeared
like an incantation when
was it only a few years back
and then of course it slipped away
or maybe just receded some
and surfaced slightly reconfigured
in this coronal summer yard it
fills the mind beside a purple
ghost’s shadows moving against
reddish stone on a wind which
kills me in the way those leaves
themselves more or less do
level something somehow blocking
a path toward that moment I’m
always about to be inside
a word of one god (it seems)
forsaken world or another
glowing with its specks of sky’s
blue deflection true we
never can completely leave
behind what it is we’ve been through
or can we now what on earth
(as in heaven) are we up to?