What I Should Have Said to the Person Who Asked Me Why the Fields Are Littered with Old Cars
Rotten apple in the tire treads & the bees sucking their homesick sweetness from bruise & bang, O autumn, season of mellow breathlessness, when the firewood isn’t split yet & the shed roof won’t stand another winter’s weight of snow & I am rushing from orchard to kitchen, dishpans heaped with fruit too soft to bite, though why am I always so desperate to save every single one, as if it would be a crime to let rot have her way, a crime to bless the hornets & the blowflies, to let the wheelbarrow rest in the way it’s always dreamed of, future of slow rust in the dooryard, contemplations of wind, of raccoons, of the woman who wanders out into the unmown grass, cigarette pinched between slender fingers, nightgown stained with coffee, for she too will be honored to rust in this yard, where the mice scurry under the collapsing shed, where evening shivers & hugs a new moon to its sagging breast
[first published in Maine Arts Journal; forthcoming in Calendar]
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