Menting, Michelle

English

The Open Repository @Binghamton (The ORB)

FIRST SNOWAUBADEMICHELLEMENTINGSuncups pock the feeder now, and the birdsscratch seeds from flakes. Last night, we thoughtwe heard a loon lost in the middle of November.How it must have fallen out of August and spentthe months of autumn concussed to finally wakein this sudden preamble of winter. We were wrong‚of course. In this wind and forest of naked limbs,words are sparse and the leaves rustle away any sensein syntax. This is true: now is not the partnering time.Why is it when the leaves color and break, we tooand we two part with our solitary Inigrations?The temperature drops outside and inside, and furtherinside the valves of our hearts solidify as if becomingoak stems: so brittle each pump threatens to breakartery from organ. But this is wrong. We are healthybut changing and mishear what we say, what goes onaround inside this house and outside abovethe fingered limbs of oak and birch. We want to heara loon’s tremolo, we want its weep and wail‚its calling to a mate. We want the longing to be real,and a sound so sorrowful of yearning‚ it would weepthe frost far off the needles of pines and crack the rimefrom the cattails in the wetlands (we once knew as mossy,611Menting: First Snow AubadePublished by The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB), 2014as warm and deep). We want, but even the effort of wantfails to surprise us into thawing. At dawn, on my walkto feed the chickadees, I found two squirrels. Their headsremoved, and at the stumps of their necks, the reddest berriesof blood. And something stirred inside. Outside, beyondthe knotted fingers of forest, I saw a hawk lift off atopthe tallest pine. When its talons released the branch,frost shattered and fell into flakes that waved and flashedin the opening sun. With each flap of its wingsthe sound wavered, created a false tremolo misheardas wailing. And I was too slow to cover my earsto block out that bird’s call, its voice that spearsthe moming fog, that marks the severance of warmth.Mentmg 622Harpur Palate: a Literary Journal, Vol. 14, Iss. 1 [2014], Art. 17https://orb.binghamton.edu/harpurpalate/vol14/iss1/17

First Snow Aubade

https://orb.binghamton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2050&context=harpurpalate

First Snow Aubade

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