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OCTOBER

Crow pours down in a flume of black
to filch road kill from the yellow line.

Abandoned seeds, barrowed by the wind,
fill the air with orphans.

Chittering squirrel on a tombstone
hides acorns in dead mouths.

Torn nets of tomato vines hang,
heavy catch gone, in concluded gardens.

Rabbit, shot through the eye, stiffens
as it hangs, dowsing for lost ground.

Chainsaws with growling rhetoric argue
trees down, rebut them into cords.

Geese fly in shovelheads leaving
a tumulus of miles behind them.

Hay bales moored to the load line
tugboat the freighted house to harbor.

Bacon and hams from the summer-fed pig
are announced by the knife's discard.

Dry wick of moon in the day's blue wax
burns gold in the night's dark oil.

Shotgun, cleaned and blued,
recovers its hunger for deer.

Twisted menorahs of drying sumacs
are tipped with the pulp of fire.

Pears float in amniotic sugar, ready
to birth sweetness in empty January.

The legend of woodpiles spells out
length of days, distance of winter.

Early dusk spills out from the rinds
of pumpkins blackened by frost.

The brine of cold darkness preserves
the lighted windows of a distant house.

Learn more about this author, Michael Bettencourt.
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