Let us fumble, scratch,
slash, claw
through endless Autumn fields

cut from hushed velvet,
hushed velvet and husks.

You say at night
my voice rounds, softens,
grows heavy.

Breeze rustles twigs,
lulls, a lullaby floats over
from the farmhouse.

Fields fill with dust,
bone homes, crackling
with seed ticks and mice.

I think of fruit, the toil
of warm flesh, how it bulged,
slumped off and rotted.

You ask how I could have forgotten
harvest, entered the slumber,
reaped nothing?

The Moon blooms, ripens the sky.

I stop, squat,
trace circles in the sand.

This year I just don't  have the heart.


                                                                -kevin mann