Nearly October and the front oak's branches

are mostly quicksilvered,

though we watch

a handful here, a handful there

of leaves tinge copper.

Beneath the zodiac's turning wheels

and the stars’ nocturnal parade,

the moon, pockmarked and mottled,

stamps night's scroll,

and luminescent sealing wax

drips through leaf-lattice,

puddles around our feet.

Caught in the celestial tilt-and-balance,

we wear our brief freedom

like constellational moneychangers,

all glitz and glimmer,

and weigh the disks of sun and moon

like two coins on the pans of Libra's scales.

That is how it mostly goes.

Blindly, we rummage around for an evener:

the black wick inside the candle's flame,

our fingertips licked.