late autumn

we hide beneath the blankets and we dream
of stranger places than the ones we've seen
all that we know is what we've done or been
yet we surrender to the fictive gleam
of light in motion of imagined beam
and think our senses as alert and keen
as when the future was as bright and clean
as clear cool water of a mountain stream
above us in the morning birds fly south
to places where we've been and cannot be
their easy freedom almost past belief
and i am standing here with open mouth
envisioning those things i cannot see
and caught as usual between joy and grief