The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Beth Paulson

AUBADE

Wind blows stalks of hollyhocks
against the back wall
like someone knocking on a door
a hunter's truck whines
along the highway
far off a dog barks
stifling the owl's last call

out a window the silly sunflowers
cry open their late mouths—

why is the sun so slow so far away

sky gun-metal over the hills
where winter will soon empty the trees
snow fill them up again
the earth behaving as if nothing were wrong?

I am trying to love what lives
a little longer—
all the yellow leaves that whirl
and fall to the ground with no regret
bright berries of mountain ash
each one a little sun.




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