Apple tree – drip candy from the highest bough.
The last robins shit mulberry down.
The woolybear wanders the pavements briefly,
then recedes, stretched, compressed
into a redemption of leaves. Rabbits
are fat now and bounding. Squirrels
have nuts in a bind, sequestered.
But morning don’t want me today.
Airs gone thin to the bone.
And whether it’s trains or thunder, few can say
in the canned winds of grates,
shiftless hums of the fridge.
The leaves, yes, the leaves,
I hear them now, chattered
in wind chime, displaced toads,
applauding their own demise –
an ovation in ash and maple.
Is it wrong to mourn cicada,
to brush a split husk and lounge
warm in a stout house?
The Bartlett pear thumps
a burden down, plumb,
just beyond the cedar fence,
there in the brisk and soon
forbidding.
Image: Kristian Seedorff on Unsplash
Sweet and Bitter Greens 