Much is mud in this world, is tree stumps
that sprout nothing, is rock-sterned ridges
on which water cracks its teeth. Everywhere
the earth sows its stone harvest—in turbid fields,

in the soles of your shoes, in the slick heart
of the most innocently blushing peach.
September arrives and surveys what’s left,
packing its bags full of thistle fluff, bees’ wings:
all that summer couldn’t sweep up

in her green charade. You are thinking now
of the pomegranate, of cracking its jeweled heart
and forgetting the name of your mother.
You are thinking of lesser deaths, of the arsenic
seeded in the apple’s dark-starred core.

Not yet, though, not yet. What holds us here is less
what holds the pear past ripeness to the tree,
receding into its own sweetness, more
what holds a footprint in the mire: a little sun,
expectation, the lightest impress of air.

from “How to Study Birds,” Sarah J. Gardner, c. 2006