The Blackberry Hedge in Autumn

Here the birds come to twitter
about what’s left after the harvest moon
grows orange and swollen, so heavy
it finally falls from the sky.

I hear your argument again.
You’ll be the slow suicide,
eat yourself to death with sugar.
No better way to go,

the birds say, with a sound
that plays like joy on a day so dank
it’s good it will end early, finish
with a glimpse of sun yellow as the last plum tomato

left to ripen inside a tire rim.
It’s a thick thing to be left behind,
the birds sing. Better late than never.
I hear their platitudes

blend with chimes someone has set
outside a window
to catch breezes off the lake.
Whatever metal’s left in me

has gone soft. Here the birds
lose a major scale
and find it plaited to the minors.
There’s nothing left to resolve, only

the laggard pace of fall, stale leaves
rotting in a ditch.
Poplar, birch, oak, cherry.
What difference does it make?

The songbird orchestra tunes,
checks one reed against another,
ostracizes a gull the color of lake water.
One more pedestrian idea gone to seed.

That I could save you from
your own appetites?
The blackberries picked over, shrunken,
bitter, too far gone to matter.