• Season of Hollow


    A scarlet leaf parachutes from its nest.

    An abandoned egg freezes over.

    The wind whispers songs of peril while passing through a field.

    Summer is more distant than a memory;

    The sun's warm glow serves only as a faint, receding outline of once-filled days.

    Each day has a hollowed feeling as if it hadn't passed at all

    And my heart stops beating with each cloud

    Lakes which once offered a sanctuary from heat now threaten with frostbite

    A late bird falls out of line from its flock,

    As lost as that leaf, I recall.

    Lush grass becomes brown, and that cruel wind robs each tree of the shirt on its back.

    Stripped now, these needles from the Earth offer no impetus of climbing.

    These nostalgic places are filled with ghosts now.

    I long for the first snow or the first ray of sun,

    For I feel as if Earth has abandoned us,

    A young mother too frightened to sovereign her child.

    I long for the feeling that something is still alive;

    I long for the feeling that this planet is still stirring, still turning.

    Snow provides only the feeling that something out there is still working.

    But that dead season, now, is more distant than a memory,

    And the green starts to glow,

    And the wind retreats like a murderer from a crime scene.

    The first plant life blooms while an egg incubates under the welcoming sun.