Flicker

This morning a flock of flickers—flash of red,
flash of yellow at my feet—rose and flew
past the blue turkey-foot, the prairie dropseed.
The grasses nodded their purple heads, bronzed,
lazy in their affirmations … until the wind blew.

How fast the wheel turns, love, in the corn-colored
light of September. The feathered heart stirs,
seeing how sumac flares, how the honey locust
shivers down its gold and gilds my driveway—
a school of minnows diving, or, if the eye blurs,

the shimmy of a yellow dress to the floor
and where are you to be found—in the slow pour
of strong coffee, the smoky stars that reel invisible
over the city? My children toss leaves up to see them
leap and fall and leap again, laugh and beg for more.

—published in Quiver (Red Dragonfly Press, 2009)