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6 4 Y F I V E G O L D F I N C H E S K A R L K I R C H W E Y for Bill Patterson There’s an apple tree in the salt meadow, its trunk backswept by the years of winter gales, advancing in retreat, so if it could walk, it would walk like Groucho. The flawed fruit drops and smears, melting from yellow to brown as it lies in the tangled lawn, making a wasp-stung dizzy smell where burnt-out stalks of lupine lean against goatsbeard and teasel. Like grains of light added to a scale, first one goldfinch hops down, then another and another, as they pick seeds from the pomace, kicking the beam imperceptibly toward the end of August, then vanish before the eye only to reappear gradually as a smattering of gold dust or small blizzard of yellow in the twisted trunk’s shadow, 6 5 R to move and freeze and look, in their illusive math: nor in memory will they forsake this poor pelting house of cedar shake, but even miles distant and months later still gorge on the deliquescent hoard, each delicate-wristed bird. ...

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