From yesterday’s feed of boozy
windfall mash
all the way back
to the first crunched leaflets of
jack-in-the-pulpit,
the year’s a blurred ramble,
a hand-to-mouth wandering
from hives smashed like piñatas
to gardens where squash vines,
anxious to push out
the last of their litters, turned
all elbows and knees.
Midsummer naps were as long
as it takes stones to give up sunlight,
not like this sleep she’s just
hauled herself from,
in this hill orchard
where low, fast flights
seem to be going the wrong way,
and higher up, out of focus,
each wing lope
is cried out on the air.
There were hints,
if she’d cared enough
to stop dragging chokecherries
off a bush: that gold foil panic
in the trees,
and that moment the air
went acute,
when every tendril sensed fall
and turned its barb
back on itself.
Among leaves strewn
like parings of Golden Delicious,
she fights a mantle of fat
that’s weighing her
into whitening grass,
groans amazement to find herself
quilled with frost.
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