Seasons Later by Marjorie Maddox

Turn your back 

and the crow still flies into your eyes,

swarms around the iris,

pecks.  I know 

how even sorrows sown deep

sprout, come harvest,

tangle about the spine,

twist their way into the sockets

of your wind-damaged sight.

The dark summons scavengers

that prey on the past—

your peripheral vision, one large wing

that won’t fly away.  

Some days, you’re a misplaced Persephone 

caught in a labyrinth of Van Gogh’s crops,

shadowed with light and shame.

The seasons shift and swirl

their maze of memories,

cart you between worlds dying

or left for chaff.

In the half-light of almost-day,

gray reaps gray.

*

Fight crow with its own screech.

Call out to the caw, the corn, 

the winnowed wheat,

the sky, vast and unknowing.

They never answer,

but your newfound voice dislodges 

kernels caught in the throat,

catapults choice into neat rows

of tended possibilities. Take a sickle,  

a hoe, your bundled woes, and follow your

self, scattering hope—

that beautiful, edible weed—behind you.

*Based on a photograph by Erica McCreedy and previously published in Status Hat (now defunct)

Professor of English at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 11 collections of poetry—including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation—the short story collection What She Was Saying; 4 children’s/YA books—including Inside Out: Poems on Writing and Reading Poems with Insider Exercises & I’m Feeling Blue, Too!—Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (PSU Press), and Presence (assistant editor). www.marjoriemaddox.com.