SEASONAL

All lemon-lime, and caught
in the curb, ginkgo wings mind thin spines,
brightly pathetic.
If they move, they move with whip-wind obligation,
then resume a heaviness. If they fly, they fly
from boot tread, briefly.

For weeks now, trees have heaved freight
overboard—pods and cones
and the final, reluctant prophets. Like a tick,
I couch in disconsolation.
Somewhere a river birch is resolutely flayed alive.
Shed your self-pity. I sleep to survive.

JEFFERSON COMMONS

I.

Cars languish in their daily stations
when a cool front rolls into the parking lot.
A strict row of balding maples
separates commerce from subdivision
above the runoff drainage ditch,
which waits like a big bird’s lower beak
for a drink. Heavy clouds, then
downpour, anxious to settle
fast, sluice and gutterspew glazing over itself
down the grade to the tilted bill.
But its gullet is blocked, leaf-infested.
Days: and the rain stops.

II.

Sun on Monday. I come with my rake.
Arduously, seepage had inched
from the drain’s brim through clotted
humus at its PVC esophagus. Now
the bright yellow film which remained
festers in freak ninety-degree heat. I scrape
the septic surface open to its chocolate
underbelly, stench and a spirit
of skeeters lift, released. Brooding air
seems like an extension of me,
as I stuff globs into large paper bags.
Breaking from the wet weight.