STILL LIFE ON THE FIRST DAY OF DRIVING HOME
Beyond the all-night diner’s pulse of crows,
rain pushes an empty swing set in song.
Splish, splash. The gold water, once snow, hushed
now by headlights. And all around geese flap
their wings as waste spreads thick along the curbs.
Yesterday I drove a suburb’s slick street,
found a box of teddy bears and a light
blue folding chair. The car radio tuned
between stations. You can go now, I told
the man outside my door. And the woman?
My rearview shows her crouched, watching feathers
fall straight through powerlines. Good-bye always
this silent film about the sky, the blank
space between. Her fishing boots, yellow-bright.
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AUGUSTA LAUREL FUNK was raised in Montana and Ohio. Poems and reviews of hers have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Tinderbox, Meridian, Passages North, and The Michigan Quarterly Review blog. She currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan and is an MFA candidate at the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program.
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Poem in Tinderbox
Another poem in Tinderbox