Aubade, Hwy 12A
       

The river broken with ice. A tractor rusts out beneath a wilting roof,
a banana peel blossoms from a dirt-scabbed snowbank, and although from a distance

the trees endure an individual dignity, up close their arms are uncomfortably thin.
In the pinched hedgerow: a male scarlet tanager, bright as a crushed berry.

Dogs bore golden holes in the frozen embankments. White as salt meat, the road splits
in its lanes despite the dark patching, squiggled as writing. I don't know if the small, furred

bodies on the side, opened by speed and metal, are worse now because their stillness is
the stillness of the hillside. The river is endless: it ends at the bottom of the sea.

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Copyright © 2022 Rachel Abramowitz All rights reserved
from The Birthday of the Dead
Conduit Books & Ephemera
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission