fall screams a funeral song in and out of my nostrils
as leaves play gravedigger to brood ix’s cicada hums:
time nurtures feelings for you like nymphs
feeding off woven roots of hardwood trees.
but when brood x reemerges from black soil
to strip back bark and line limbs with eggs
let's leave outlines of our burrowed memories
in labyrinths of mud trenches and tiny holes.
may those sentiments become the long-swallowed prey
of barred owls, consumed whole and freed
as piecemeal skeletons in pellet coffins
fated to sink beneath grass blades after rain.