by Brenda Mann Hammack
The birds keep dropping
like thick leaves only
to rise again. A truck
scorches by and my eyes
scan, adjusting for depth
and focus.
Yesterday, even the wind took color,
flung itself at my windows,
the screens of my sunporch.
Each leaf meant a particle,
a has-been, as dogwood trees
loosed their hold on summer.
Lately, diffusion and saturation
seem no opposites. In this season
of disengagement, I walk each day,
minding erosion or certainty
–a squirrel’s eye full of nothing
though the pelt holds it shape
without bloating
or some child’s lost parakeet escaped
to road’s edge where it rests
on it’s side: all its metaphysics unfolding.
Here, even I slip my skin,
discomposing myself,
if only in the hopes of sprouting another.
