THE LONELY WHITE WOLF

A coolness threads the city — a thin, deliberate sigh.

Pages close with the soft grief of small ceremonies.

I drift through bookshop aisles, fingertips reading other people’s afternoons,

then sit beneath a cafe lamp where steam composes late prayers.

Autumn arranges itself in leaves like quiet decisions;

the sea keeps its slow punctuation, the forest counts light on lichen.

I take short disappearances: a train, a bench, a notebook,

melancholy softened by the hush of ordinary pilgrimage.

If endings are harvests, let me gather them gently —

tea, a finished page, the practice of returning.

Lived through a thousand moons, I learn the grace

of carrying what matters and leaving the rest to fall.