See how the summer grasses you mowed last spring when the world seemed rainful and lush have yellowed. Here in August, rain is a memory. The land is a golden quilt embroidered with brush piles, blackberry, tart and sweet, fallen oak, rough cut wood that needs splitting, its bark scattered like abandoned puzzle pieces. All the tasks we swore to finish before heat, before thistle and fire, wait for our hands. You fret for hungry honeybees. I read evacuation notices. The deck is rotted soft in some places, and from there we watch as squirrels bicker over the last of the cherry plums fallen from a tree wild silver with age, only a slender mane of green along its back. Each autumn the scent of earth rises, and we consider chopping the tree down. Except March blossoms. Except rust-chested finches. All summer dusk we’ve called each other silently to study a covey of quail that slips along the hill in search of filaree and chickweed seeds. The plump blue fellow whip whips atop the oak stump. He shakes his topknot at the small brown chicks who dash into brambles at the noisy thump of our steps no matter how we try to quiet. I wanted the quail to make of these words a love poem, but each April the quail choose anew. You don’t like to speak of it, how we chose each other twice. A beginning and another beginning. You don’t believe early belladonna, naked and pale pink in all that sunshine, is an omen of hard winter. See how beautiful this harbinger. See how this flower—during a dearth of pollen—nourishes every bee, how each morning we’ve chosen each other again.
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Patricia Caspers is the founding EIC of West Trestle Review and author of three poetry collections, most recently The Most Kissed Woman in the World (Kelsay Books, 2024). Her work has appeared widely, most recently in Pithead Chapel, Ink in Thirds, and White Winged Doves: A Stevie Nicks Poetry Anthology.