by Catherine Rockwood

The birches up the hill
toss their blent yellow-green
sparkling like surf
while the unsecured back screen door
creaks and bangs.

Our fall yard’s a ship underway,
big and solid and restless.
The useful winds, occupied
with the roof and billowing trees
don’t touch my body at all
but float oxygen in like a kiss.

My bluejeans suit me today. My ass
has never looked better,
and I say that at forty-six
with some expectation of fifty.
Yes it’s a great afternoon,

it’s dreadfully fine. I can stretch.
My shoulders are settled in just the right spot
for action; also, they don’t hurt. And the air—
like cider? no, like good tea:
wakes you up, gold-washed, see-through.

Twenty years from now, thirty,
will somebody conjure this up? Will they say,
“Sip. It’s a microclimate,
exactly like former October?”
Look, I don’t know. Ask Montaigne,
who will tell you a tale of an egg.

In his time they had troubles too.
Exactly like? There’s no such thing.
Only every very last day,
and the one after that.

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Catherine Rockwood is a poet and independent scholar based in MA. Poems in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Rust + Moth, Psaltery & Lyre, and elsewhere. Essays and reviews in Strange Horizons, Rain Taxi, Mom Egg Review, and Tin House.