Harvest

The grackles plummet down to pierce the lawn

For seeds and fat brown live oak acorns and

Ignore the orange plastic watering cans

My daughters drop in the cold grass, my daughters

Saying, Goodnight grass, as if the blades they’d watered

By hand were their daughters, as if the grass

Were a feeling they’d been feeling, greenly

Reckoning the evening, the ball moss falling from the trees,

The sun circling the crouched shade of the weeping

Persimmon tree as mildly as the knife rounds

The persimmon I bring inside so I can say

Of the pierced skin, Look, this is the color we

Want sunset to be, the color of the plastic

Watering cans shocking the dark that falls

Over the suggestions of footprints in the grass,

The black grackles, and the acorns battering

Our metal roof while I feed my ravenous daughters

A soft dinner that they clutch with grubby hands and gnaw.