Under trees sparse
with golden leaves,
the cold ground’s heavy
push against our backs,
you said, The Earth
is growing up too,
just like us,
but at a slower pace.
Around us, baby branches
gasped spindly breaths,
stretched their collective
into the cold. I shivered.
You turned to me. We’re all
doing the same thing:
the gulls muscling
across the glass slab sky
where clouds and chemtrails
curl alike into gray-blue
the burrs
which choose our knits
as midwives
the lake that bends
and bends
and bends.
