Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
~for the men and women who fish to feed the soul of others~


this spring we will not walk Central Park.  The cherry blossoms and the new buds will go unobserved, and just like a
felled tree
in the forest, their birthing,  weeping, and silent dying, will go unheard.

but the roses come!

delivered by Whole Foods, red roses included with our food order,
for red roses are a vital staple, a gift of the globalized logistical feat that feeds we eight million prisoners, a red beacon to all currently

held in solitary confinement.

The men who bring them from the Netherlands, and the men from the Caribbean who deliver them, they by virus, as of yet, have not

been felled.

and I turn my mind’s eye to the mountains of heaven asking
“From Where will Come Our Salvation?”^

heaven answers with a wry awry, why Whole Foods, of course!

the cut roses pass in a few days, their heads slumped over, victims of their own virus, the inevitability + cyclicality of time.

but the petals, pose a question,
as they too are
felled and fall,
how is our death different from yours?

neither I, or the quietus of the empty streets,
even heaven,
have a ready reply;
for all of us are
felled, fallen,
by an onerous, hungry
silence.



^ Psalm 121:1
you are making roots in my chest
that burst through my brain
you drive me insane
Leaf Fall
by Michael R. Burch

Whatever winds encountered soon resolved
to swirling fragments, till chaotic heaps
of leaves lay pulsing by the backyard wall.
In lieu of rakes, our fingers sorted each
dry leaf into its place and built a high,
soft bastion against earth's gravitron—
a patchwork quilt, a trampoline, a bright
impediment to fling ourselves upon.

And nothing in our laughter as we fell
into those leaves was like the autumn's cry
of also falling. Nothing meant to die
could be so bright as we, so colorful—
clad in our plaids, oblivious to pain
we'd feel today, should we leaf-fall again.

Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea. Keywords/Tags: Fall, autumn, leaf, leaves, swirling heaps, piles, wind, rakes, laughter, backyard, play, playing, falling, children, bright, colorful, plaids
 Apr 2020 Camden Michael Jones
g
go back to where it began:
trombone / cob nut / tadpole / violin /
you fell —
and i have not breathed it since
except that hot summer;
when we excavated
an entire roman village of chicken bones
from the soil
where now there are none
copyright gb 2020

— The End —