SHE SAID IT’S A SEASON WHEN EVERYTHING DIES: By Diane Seuss
for Lauren

and who am I to tell her otherwise?

The dog pulls me down the darkening street

toward a slender, blue-lipped moon that lies

concave upon its violet winding sheet.

I’ve tried to say the leaves are the trees’ hair;

like hair they will grow back, or like the skins

of coral snakes, dispensable. I swear

that fall can cleave from summer, conjoined twins

stuck together at the skull, severed,

so one can stay behind where all is green.

The other, maybe stronger, wearing her

white jacket, walks into cold, a queen

of complication, change, frost flowers, inflection,

of living fish beneath the ice, of resurrection.