by Martin Willitts Jr
August trails across the sky,
rippling shadows.
It is finished raining.
The quiet cold remains,
trees dazed by the sudden changes,
ripen with crisp eminence.
Juncos quiver on maple branches.
Soon, September’s wingspan will darken
and lengthen into drizzle-chills.
Already, the clutch of winter berry
and red holly berries
begin their slow flight of appearing,
preparing for the resurgence of fall.
Floods of geese practice landing
and flying,
eventually leaving,
only to return.
The season warbles.
Days unravel a spool of thread.
Yesterday disappears into the froth-churning,
purpose-driven,
dazzling adrenalin-thrust uncertainty.
During windbreak in the cinnamon night,
the world reduces to incomprehensible silence
under the deadfall of leaves.
Martin Willitts Jr is an editor for Comstock Review. He won 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022. His 21 full-length collections include the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent books are “Ethereal Flowers” (Shanti Arts Press, 2023); “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023); and “Leaving Nothing Behind” (Fernwood Press, 2023); “The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” (Shanti Arts Press, 2024) and “All Beautiful Things Need Not Fly” (Silver Bowl Press, 2024)