Who the hell wants to be in bloom anyway?
Good God, it’s autumn.
You’d never put your feet in the stream these days.
The water is ice cold and clogged with lichen.
The sky is lit through gauze.

Not even the birds dare to be large,
they arrive weighing nothing
but breath and bone.
Their hearts have already gone South.

The leaves of my houseplants collect dust.
I touch them and they fall apart,
stems no longer flexible. But the motes
on their way to heaven near the window
give us their quiet glints of disdain.

If I go out I wear a coat of stiff sackcloth
like someone condemned
to silence in a biblical story.
People do not greet me or give me my change.
I make errors in the language so bold they’re depraved
but no one rebukes me or corrects my mistakes.

I’m subdued, I’m unchanged despite the season.
I’m the mute witness to things turning gold
beside the freeway, things that I’m sure no one else
drives slow enough to notice.

I didn’t notice them either
before the world ended.