November

Jared Walsh

I do not remember
how I reached this tower
that gives on what a mad and blind
philosopher once called the people
but seems to the trained eye
a virgin with no suitors
visited by the lone shimmer
of Venus playing with her own light
when I first climbed these steps
I fashioned myself a soldier of fortune
gilded hilt dangling at my side
carrion birds poised in the sky
to scour the bones of my prey
hoots of battle cries filled the air
what was there to kill or save
I do not remember
kill or save me November

You fell out of the night materialized
from the ash of radio static
and raised me up on velvet smoke
of piano pieces steeped in wine
watercolors and walks
along the fortress walls in snow
that anointed our recitations
of suicidal and banished poets
become our private classics
the glow of their nights
streetlamps and apothecaries
warmed our wet dovetailed palms
their sailboats rigged with despair
and keeling over on the quicksand
of the sea and shattering shoals
still show white for me when I sleep
and I can taste the laughter on the air
from beyond the horizon’s last ember
escaped from your lips November

Bio
Jared Walsh is a writer and attorney living in Rocky Hill, NJ. He is also a manager of Scaffolds Press, a literary publisher based in Princeton. He was educated at Penn (B.A.) and Stanford Law School (J.D.), where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal. He will publish his first novel, Interludes, this summer.