" Night thinks it’s crying again and I
keep listening to a song about autumn where
an apple tastes like longing and every leaf
in the maple tree tries to explain loss
through a series of colors—hectic orange,
indifferent red, a kind of gold that speaks
directly to god or moonbeams and in the dark
as I drive down wet roadways watching
for deer, the only thing I can see clearly
are the yellow leaves christening
my windshield and I think how we are taught
not to love too many, too much, the night,
the darkness, and I think I am crying but it is
only rain.

— Kelli Russell Agodon, “Night thinks it’s crying again,” Southern Indiana Review (Spring 2021) "

― Kelli Russell Agodon