AUTISM: A POEM

. . . . . XXV. Afternoon Assessment

Shadows shortening toward noon,
. . . . . those dark partners accompanying

everything all morning begin to slip
. . . . . away. A spot of sunlight yet flutters

inside the blank frame of an upstairs
. . . . . window, flickering like an isolated

star in a night sky. V-shapes of geese
. . . . . moved on one month ago, drifting

south over ripples of river current
. . . . . glistening under sunshine, leaving

behind only a flat slab of skyline.
. . . . . Bare limbs of backyard beech trees

sway in a chilly breeze. The brown
. . . . . stalks of garden flowers that once

bowed, weighed down by summer
. . . . . growth, are now empty, stand stark,

straight and stiff amid this early
. . . . . winter landscape. By the time those

outlines of afternoon’s silhouettes
. . . . . begin to lengthen across a tawny

stretch of lawn beneath the three
. . . . . elms bending alongside our house,

where my wife and son are still
. . . . . waiting for me to drive with them,

we will know a diagnosis, terms
. . . . . we had hoped to avoid learning,

complex sentences with words
. . . . . strung together like beads threaded

into an old ornamental bracelet
. . . . . worn as a reminder of the missing.