Between Smoke and Honey

Kaila Young

“It was springtime, and the park’s grass was very green and the air suffused with honeysuckle and lilacs both, which was almost too much.” –David Foster Wallace

In the pink dew of tomorrow

she spins webs with

pink spider fingers,

lacey black letters

crawling on her canvas

in the warblers paintbrush

singing to the purple finch,

like the one she found

dead in the leaves last winter.

She cradled him in her

pink spider fingers,

carried him

to the woods

and buried him proper

near the old maple under the

sun, it’s branches home to

woodpeckers, their drumbeat tune

ringing in the wild lily, always

yellow in the day, black

at night, its petals curled towards

the moon light.

Tomorrow,

the geese will flee the lake

with the scent of rain, and

she will trace their flight

with a feather pen.