Half eaten awareness is
a Tuesday evening tango
at the cold scent of a woman’s
wrinkles. That’s a raisin.

Purple curtains. Perfect strangers.
Knuckle sized sacraments. Chewy,
junipers too leathery to consume.

The dew awakens. Somehow it does.
Ripping through the clutched earth.

Squishy as worms gutted. Those beech
leaves rising like a time before winter-

a time when we first began to listen.

– George Cassidy Payne