Only Stars Out Elegy + Pantoum

Earthen color
displaced the white of her eyes
when her cheeks rose, her lips curled, and
I was

displaced. The white of her eyes—
the only stars out that night.
I was
looking down to see

the only stars out that night.
The clouds were thick,
looking down to see
what my memories withered into.

The clouds were thick
when her cheeks rose, her lips curled, and
what my memories withered into:
earthen color.

Autumn's Shadow (revised)

Stubbornly, I’ve sat here
ages before this great red oak tree.
gravedigging
tilling the soil with fractured nails,
under this scarlet oak–poised with health, a sturdy spine.
His leaves green. No, yellow.
No. Red.
Stop.

Like blind men in the dark
grasping the air for pet birds
(who left, desiring spring),
his branches erect.
Arrayed with bark, coarse
like the grooves of my mouth
absent of her tongue.
His roots dive deep
–six feet deep–
breaking the birch boundaries
of her innocent grave.
He sucks and slurps
her decomposition. nutrients.
Now she is fertile. Only to him.

Through his roots up his trunk spewing
through his branches into his leaves
His envious leaves.
No, yellow.
No. Red.
Brown.

In a waste, his demeaning leaves
spat to my face.
Shotgun. Scatter. to the ground.
Where they lie's where I shall die
in the cast of his scarlet shadow's sound,

here where I’ve sat
seasons before his dreaming roots clutched her feeble corpse,
waiting for her to break down.

The Caterpillar

Listen, the leaves break.
As the sun devours dark,
so hunger fuels change.