It’s Halloween and in an hour or two

the dead will be up and walking in our air,

hungry for the ghost supper.

But on the lake

I’m rowing around the edge, nearly liminal,

just exactly skirting a line between

the hem of the world

and her mystery.

I glide on the water

as if my being was as intermediary,

an intercession

in a setting I’ve been sent to.

All the leaves but the Oak are down.

The cob is teaching the last cygnet how to fly.

In the distance,

the neighbor whose cabin burned rebuilds.

His hammer dents the movement we are in

as if it were signing a name in time –

something wrapped in a cartouche,

in hieroglyphs and their determinants

hung up to signify –

like the reflections of the ruined docks

breaking up in mandalas

tell me who and where we are as we pass.

— Joseph Dionne