Persimmons
waste no time
in
the invisible space between unripe, rotten.
Pecan
trees bear no such thing.
Peach
tree, gnarled as a swamp cypress,
offers
fruit like stones, or fists.
I
do not mean to suggest all is bitter –
the
apples are good, if small. Also, the pears
and
one hundred million black walnuts.
Rain
bludgeons garden into ditch.
Animals
for milk and meat and eggs. Goats,
chickens,
rabbits, pig.
In
spring my brother and I arrange
severed
heads into a toy train.
Dew
washes blood from grass.
This
sounds worse than it is.
Amorak
Huey recently left the newspaper business, after 15 years as a
reporter and editor, to teach writing at Grand Valley State University in
Michigan. His poetry has appeared recently or is forthcoming in The Oxford American, Crab Orchard Review,
Subtropics, Nimrod, Gargoyle, and other journals.