This is not about my life. I was reading the menu,
I was part of a Resistance, someone dropped a glass of wine.
The singing of glass was everywhere
and the clear leaves were all over the bar.
Sleep, sleep, somebody said

but it was part of a conversation I couldn't get the gist of.
Did I know the lines at Arles had fallen?
Had I heard about the swamps outside St. Pierre?
Each day, I read the lists in the newspaper

and his name was never among them.
There are reports that our retreating soldiers
saw red leaves shuffling strangely in the winds
until angels rose through the highest branches
and saved them with their wings.

The man who spilled his drink was singing now.
He raised his broken glass to the lights.
In the jagged stem was the tiniest red stone of wine,
which he swallowed. The crowd applauded.

Every day, more names.
We all pretend to believe the story about angels.
I think the world takes place on the surface of a brilliant red leaf.
When the wind blows and the tree shakes,
things fall closer to that leaf's black veins.