start    autumn

Dawn-wet
            purpled grapes
noon heat, shuffled scent
            goldenrod gate.


Bog onion/brown
            dragon/ jack—
your splendid pulpit
            seeped and fallen. Berries
cluster and scarlet.


Green-black-green-black
            larva on a milked stalk.
A whole under-skin—
            this one you must shed.

scattering

here—near headlands
            of the Charles

            streaming sunlight green
great heron hold-still   morning fish

afternoon—cirrus flicks to dusk above
            pink-topped pines

                                    for nights in dark—

beaver felled a moonlit
                        silver stand of aspen—

            all hearty, silenced young—
so the heron made a rookery to return




            labor day of strained

and broken rituals, river

            isn’t done dimming light, cleaning up.

                        It grows so dark with weeds
                        pull every bit of summer

husband—and I—we erect twined

            wild grapevine

heron watch us from above

                                                plant

            bushes for the youngster’s wedding arch


spade into loose clay
            and pried from pine needled shade
                        springy moss
                                    tuck the roses into that

velvet     thumb prick
             end-of-summer couple lasting
one fraught season.     

                                                Last night's rain
            snuffed the blazing and
buttonbush balls unpinned
            the field’s lace wasted

hardly and soon—
                        seeds that took chance
            to root-fruit-wilt, to let

trees having been so recently
                        obscured
            cast dust

Kelly DuMar is a Boston based poet and playwright who leads creative writing workshops in person and online. She has published three poetry chapbooks, including her most recent, girl in tree bark, published by Nixes Mate. Kelly's poems are published in Bellevue Literary Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Tiferet, and more, and are upcoming in Thrush, Glassworks, and Lily Poetry Review. Her nature photos are featured in Leon Literary Review, Feral, Barren and more. Kelly produced the Our Voices Festival of Boston Area Women Playwrights at Wellesley College for twelve years, and the annual Boston Writing Retreat and the weeklong summer Play Lab for the International Women’s Writing Guild for many years. Currently, Kelly produces the monthly Open Mic for the Journal of Expressive Writing. Her daily blog, #NewThisDay, features nature photos from her daily walks on the Charles River with reflections on the writing life. Her website it kellydumar.com

Published February 21 2022