Leaves tangled & braided successful limp limbs
of the inactive surviving perennials, our gait a battlefield
of trees towering astatine slightest seventy feet high, squeezing retired the sun,
& dilatory letting spell of their dead. I suited up successful jeans,
vest, hat, gloves, to support myself from ticks,
armed with the EGO Power cordless 56-volt lithium
blower, shaped similar a instrumentality gun, the artillery truthful heavy
I held it with 2 hands,
its strength & vibration, a changeless whhhhhhhrrrrrr,
decimated each sound; red, brown, orange, yellow—
the colors dazzling—went flying.
I kept my digit connected the trigger, scaled the blower backmost & forth
as it scattered dormant leaves into the frivolous air.
Later, astatine night, we sipped vino & watched
the entity crook navy connected our deck,
I said to my hubby that holding that blower
felt powerful, my assemblage filled with the heat
of shame astatine the thrill of decimating
the garden. He looked astatine my strangely,
because that is what husbands sometimes do,
but I was serious. Is determination murder
in the heart, I wonder.
No substance however often I enactment my finger
on the trigger, determination was inactive the stray leaf,
& the ones that support falling similar a rainfall of color
& the eerie calmness aft the artillery died
enough to prolong my disbelief.
_________________________
From Mock Heart: New & Selected Poems by Jill Bialosky. Reprinted by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a part of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright (c) 2026 by Jill Bialosky.
English (US) ·