Prose Poem # 1

The Fall

Photo by Elijah Gowin

The season is changing- autumn ascending from ground to sky,

raptured,

tinting the whole world gold. I put fruit scraps in the corner of the yard, to keep the wasps away from the house. (Only the queen will survive the winter). Bees stagger through the air, into the kitchen. Buzz around my son in his bright yellow shirt. They think you’re a flower. Sudden gust of wind- garlic skins skitter across the floor.

The season is changing, the world in flux. Summer dying so fall can be born.

(Morphology: the study of living organisms, the relationships between their structures. Study of the forms of words.)

It’s hard for me to sit still long enough to write. The wind picks up, scatters the leaves. The trees teem with birds: birds migrating through, local birds rushing to and fro,

stockpiling against the dark.

If I don’t keep watch, the birch in my neighbor’s yard might burst into flames, burn down to ash, without me noticing. Remnants blown away on the breeze.

Wasn’t there a tree there? I’ll say to my husband- and he’ll give me that look. Are you taking your medication?

(Hauntology: a philosophical concept in which the specters of lost futures haunt the present)

Everything is transforming, mutating, reordering itself into new forms.

The tree on the corner: dark, rich green, yellow dripping down like a yolk. Aspens trembling gold. The cottonwood across the street, orange and blood, green peeking out from underneath. In a week or two, this could all be covered with snow.

Walking by a wall of sunflowers, just beginning to curl, a petal comes loose and flies away, a lemon-colored butterfly. I watch it go, and you are next to me for a moment, red hair glowing.

Then the mourning doves explode from the bushes, and you’re gone,

reborn into a shape I’ll never comprehend.