The Lasts
- The Lasts
The last daylily, by the looks of it, has wept itself to sleep Given everything,I hate to watch it go: Corn—ears, stalks, shocks—all’s blitzed into litter la- la- la- last hurrah,season’s bon vivant of its own mauling I’m no better—dispatching three lambs into scraps and tossing salt (non-vivant) on their petal-soft peltsnow dog robs mound for hocknow geese drain down to feed on the least grains of corn spilledon the kill floor the of all of Autumn— this made bed needs someone (rural savant) to lieThe forest, by the looks of it, has amortized Its stiffs wag toe tagsOn the third day the geese (honky, itinerant, why shouldn’t they?)ascend into elsewhere [End Page 155]
Julia Shipley is the author of three chapbooks, including First Do No Harm (Honeybee Press, 2014). Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Field, Green Mountains Review, Poetry, and North American Review. She lives in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.
