Transmission No. 16
Lit Up — August’s Prompt: Harvest Season
Red leaves of rust fall
from old iron-blue oaks
like sparks out the autumn barrels
of an ancient red-nosed rifle line
pointed at the pulp-soft heart of
another AWOL-crazy year.
They found him prophesying
to a dance of winter-worried ants
under the persimmon tree, picking in
the twilight-colored fermented fruit,
cutting the eyeball-shaped seeds
in half with a rusted pocket-
knife, seeing what the seeds
see — white spoons in the center
means a long winter. “Save
your bitter maize for better days,”
he said, his Et tu Brute
before they made him drag
a cross made from the same scented
cinnamon-sticks your mom set out
in an orange vase before the first
Thanksgiving dinner I ate
with you and all your hungry family
some twenty or so years ago.
We sipped our soup as a moon
engraved with a too familiar face
gave the order and yelled, “Fire!”
Sitting there on the porch together:
half-forgotten jack-o-lanterns
full of purple flies, flickering
smoke-signals coughing in
the cracking windows of our rotten-
wrinkled eyes, starting to frown
and praying that we learn to speak
before the days run too short,
before vanilla candlewax
runs out our mouths, before
persimmon seed prophesies
come true, and all that numbing
snow falls from angry skillet-
colored winter skies and snuffs
our timid candle-tongues out.
