What does it take

to stutter step the heart. Is it autumn with all of its endings--flowers, grasses, cows gone from pasture, now storm windows, weather stripping or finding the old putty knife you used to clean the disk harrow before it was retired to winter over in the machine shed the wash line she hung clothes on early in the morning in her nightgown the corn cob pipes found everywhere-- under the hood of the truck, stuck in a hole on the workbench, above a beam in the basement little scraps of paper with words he meant to look up some day the smell of burning leaves, an old coat still on the hook.