Algific Sestina
by Lilly Baumfeld
You could never quite pinpoint the day the weather gets colder,
just that there’s a shift in liminal space between a perpetually fall
colored horizon line and the bare-branched trees clattering, concave bones
in the wind. But something about that last year was different, craving the
attention of whoever turned their ear to listen to each
branch that was barren while the ground froze over.
Maybe that was the year you learned to listen. Over
derelict telephone wires intertwining, vacant route colder
the longer you keep your window rolled down, each
yellow line faded, pavement pothole-ridden, you fall
into routine. The drive is the same as every day, the
same as every year previous, rote grooves pave the bones
of this road, the cracked concrete still rattles your bones
even when you expect the jolt. But it's over
this same drive that you notice the way that the
leaves stop bursting at seams of wire, turn colder
and reserved, shrink back on old habits – and fall.
Because the day you hear each
branch shake with their loss, see each
loose wire swing free among bare bones
of shrubbery is not the day the leaves fall,
but the day the windshield frosts over
and the glass freezes cold. Colder
than the glare of bare branches or the
rattle that demands your attention in the
wintry wind, floating. And each
year before this one will never be colder
than the ice scraped free, bones
of a frost spread delicate, ruinous over
the cool glass of this one. And fall
becomes a memory, the fall
of golden leaves paint the
ground murky, brown over
pale paved roads, each
fissure of fragmented bones
inhumed, starker; colder–
the trees fossilize. Bones
of each embalmed over-
head. Beware: a colder fall.