They have all gone now,
the fire engine-red Macintosh,
under batter with cinnamon,
gone to day school
on yellow buses
with brown-baggers,
or bruised to a freckled
taupe and plowed under
for ransom and ritual.
Some have had the life
crushed out of them
for Thanksgiving cup.
Standing on the stiff lawn
downwind of winter,
I drop the first cold
moon of November
into a fractured wheel
of apple limbs
and hear the bark
beg away.
A pine ridge,
thicker than a catcher’s mitt,
grabs half the wind
riding off Monadnock
and squeezes out
wrenching cries that hang,
like wounded pendants,
on necks
of far, thin stars.
Deep in the Earth,
in a thermal tube
of its own making,
an earthworm grows
toward a rainbow trout
sleeping under ice
and waiting to be heard,
or the last of an apple’s pips
still this side of the grass.
Copyright 2006 by the Tipton Poetry Journal.
All rights remain the exclusive property of the individual poet and may not be used without their permission.