November in Texas

Grackles
stalk like dinosaurs
pecking death from above into
the flower bed. Find grasshoppers. Seeds.

Here--it is still intensely green
white and purple lantana peeks from between weed and tall grass
and
leaves surrender to gravity.

This is autumn, but a milder ending.
it is harder to believe in the story, here,
of Persephone's loss underground
Demeter's unending grief and a world shrouded in ice.

The loss seems casual, gentle.
The old myth sounds like histrionics, dramatics, over-
done again. Hades could not have been that bad. He was a
God, after all. And all those diamonds underground, tucked into
pomegranates. A surprise for a young woman.

The sun breaks through a cloud
pulses gold through the grayness of afternoon storms
and a grackle swoops down.

You spot him out of the corner of your eye.
He looks at you, considering, feral, vicious.
And you shiver, cold enough,
and glad you are not a moth on a branch.

KAW Nov 04