August
Since the world’s not going to stop dying soon
there are bills, poems,
parents’ albums and letters.
If not children, something else
will drag us into the dimming future.
The cicadas,
an animal that, after years in the ground,
unburies itself to die,
have begun their keening,
their corpses here and there
buried in light and air, defining
in their time above ground
the season of summer stopping
to look at what’s been done again.
The robins remain unconcerned
and the crows rustle,
druids in the dark canopy
sometimes flying a short span
to another branch
as if to evade the cicadas’ auraglyphs
cutting into heavy air
while a swallowtail,
brief life,
suns itself,
out-quieting death
on a maple leaf.
Craig Evenson is a public school teacher. In addition to Off the Coast, his poems have appeared in such magazines as Barrow Street, The Louisville Review, and Illuminations. He lives in Northfield, Minnesota.