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ISSN: 1941-4137 |
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Volume Two Issue Two |
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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. |
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