Forces of Nature
- Forces of Nature
This autumn morning, after the freeze,They held a summit of the trees.Motions were made and seconded,And all the ochre, brown, and redSnowed down. Each ruined crown agrees:
Today is a day for obsequies.And since there hasn’t been a breeze,The colors haven’t mixed; insteadOur hill is a map of colonies this autumn morning:
Ochre, the land of the hackberries;Red, of the maple—geographiesThat spur my daughter to grab her sledAnd raise those nations of the dead,Scorning and smearing their boundaries this autumn morning. [End Page 104]
geoffrey brock is the author of two collections of poems, the editor of The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry, and the translator of numerous books from Italian and French. He teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Translation at the University of Arkansas. *
