Goodbye to All That

Embers by Henri Cole

click here for Cole's reading of the poem

Poor summer, it doesn't know it's dying.

A few days are all it has.  Still, the lake

is with me, its strokes of blue-violet

and the fiery sun replacing loneliness.

I feel like an animal that has found a place.

This is my burrow, my nest, my attempt

to say, I exist.  A rose can't shut itself

and be a bud again.  It's a malady,

wanting it.  On the shore, the moon sprinkles

light over everything, like a campfire,

and in the green-black night, the tall pines

hold their arms out as God held His arms

out to say that He was lonely and that

He was making Himself a man.