Taryn FitzGerald, Lookdown, 2020 (Artist Instagram)
Digital photograph
On the drive to the clinic, I count the season’s passings:
owl fleeing woods at dawn, family dog, last of the apple’s
meager crop rotting in the crisper. Petersburg Pass
nearly empty, the birches iced to steel. Branches scrape
the blue from sky. In the doctor’s office, metaphors grow
more incessant. Midwife speaking like a master gardener:
seed, grape, apricot. Clots as large as lemons. My body
fallow field. Antonym of cornucopia. From bed, a murder
of crows dims my window. Returning to their nests,
or leaving them behind. Does it matter? We all are fugitive.
I peel one fruit, another. Pith slips from grasp. Snow drops
from barren limbs. What a shame: the Earth, our grievances.
Still, I wanted to remember it: mauve of the waiting room, slight
tremor in my throat, faded, plastic trees tipping, as if toward light.