Shadow Tricks

I see your shape in crape myrtles and anything
bone thin. Thinking of you as winter comes
degrades both of us because I broke
you at the turn every season, so often
wondering whether age would transfigure
you to bloom or if you would ride the ridges
of your disaster to their termination point.

I never knew why it wasn't enough
to just share the pockets of a coat with you
standing out there in your backyard
watching the crepuscular light play
shadow tricks on the rippling lake.

That evening, you told me
that bare trees pressed
against the sky looked to you
like the dendrites in the brain

lit up
county fair style

and, yesterday, I read something
similar in a book.

But it is getting harder to separate
you from your teleology and remember
all those nights when we were the only
living things in Texas who even bothered
to smile.