The Unripe Dead

The year has come round again
to the windy date,
the downfall of leaves
in suburban neighborhood.
The turning feathers sieve
through the hourglass of air,
settle and rest: a season's just
mood while death makes compost
heaps for futures.
They will live.

When in our worst autumn red
rains gust and harvested bodies
whimper under the hill, where
will the men uncurl from their last spasms?
They wait.

On the tree's bare rafters,
a black bloom of crows.
The thrushes fly south.

The souls of warlings
brush by into gloom,
and what's the infinite compass
that tells them where the
unhallowed go,
we have no blame.

The leaves swarm at the breathless
mouth of the earth. They have time.
And will the green dead know
what chance there was, vagrants in limbo
with persimmon lips
mumbling seedless sleepless

Copyright © 2006 Sonia Raiziss All rights reserved
from Chelsea
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission