The cypresses shed blood
Red on the asphalt, driven like
Snow at the marina, and
I deathlessly sneeze and
Cough, sniffling in
Leaf mold and the changing weather,
Watching yet another
Youthful season grow old
And senile. The summer
Waned helplessly before me
And could I have seized
It, and shook it by the shoulders
I would have, saying,
"Wait for me,
Just a little longer now."
My father says one more frost and
His lawn will lose its green.
He said this morning,
"Do I hear someone mowing?"
And, sure enough, the black
Neighbor who married that nice
Filipino woman was mowing the dust,
brown clouds soaring up
Into a clear and bright Alabama
Sky, little bits of dead grass
Slung out sideways from the blade and
His skin shining, hat too, bright white,
And my father says,
"I need to mow too."
The fiddle sings like a
Well-tuned train whistle, it screaming
In my ears out of the stock
Ford speakers and it drowning out
The lack of muffler, it giving me chills.
I headed to the end of the parkway
Where it hits the highway and
Stops, the highway running
North to South.
South led to the same, the familiar,
the dark and dirty foundry
And swollen hands, busted knuckles and
More sinus infections. It led
To the same too-soft beds and
Staticy televisions.
North went straight to my brave
And beautiful wilderness, dead
On into smooth pebbles worn
By water so clean you can drink it,
To tupelos reaching into creeks
Drying up in the winter's thirst,
To birches' silver knives waving in a
Stinging wind, to the year's last
Topwater bass that leap into my lap
And there,
There I made the
Tough choice.
"Another year," I said,
"Another season."
