Elms like dead animals line the street,
gaps in yellow flesh of leaves showing spindley ribs.
As my hunched gaze follows my boot
to the pavement, I glimpse, in puddles,
birds blackening boughs in bunches
like tumors. I look up as frigid wind shakes the trees,
forces the youngest to bow, and
flocks snap like scarves, twist up
from autumn perches
—one body, one mind—
reel in a cloud like a swarm
of August insects.
Defying collision, they burst about one another
—cries filling gaps between wings—
then settle,
re-infecting the trees.
Head again hung, I watch
scarred black
leather shattering the scene.

©2002 Matthew Ephraim Duncan