Summer Postmortem

summer is dead
i found her green leaf body

at the foot of an oak
in the first snow

blanketing the valley
the smell of diesel

100 feet downridge
there’s a fallen nest

woven from strips of wild
gravevine bark

the trees are becoming
more and more vacant

though they shriek
and moan in the wind

i remember what jesus
said about new wine

and old wine skins
like this katydid lasting

long enough to be filled
with the unknown

like this spruce weeping
white beards of sap

from dozens of rows
of sapsucker-drilled wells

and all those wounds
somehow still open

summer is dead
they crucified her

two deer bound past
without seeing me

pursued as they are
by one with antlers

holding them high
almost shining

his rack as the hunters call it
his naked tree

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