A Brutal Season

Autumn draws a bead, takes aim, smokebush
plumed with seeds, mums blooming bloody,
every turning garden, every still-laden branch
the red of a warning, and the wind . . .

One morning, a nestling blown from the bough,
half-fledged and quivering on the pavement.

Yet their eyes are open, wary, so I do what
I’m meant to, leave them veiled in the grass
with a prayer for their mother’s return.

Later, I find them cold beneath the blades,
beak tucked sweetly to their pink breast.

One morning, monarchs waylaid in migration,
wings shattered over the shore like shards of
stained-glass, but one twitches a splinter-thin leg,
grasps the tip of my finger, probes the planes
of my palm with their pin-curl proboscis.

Seventeen blocks I carry them, watch wings
shiver, shed water, pulsing open and closed,
growing veined and radiant as temple windows.

Come evening I find them in the garden
where I left them, beneath the last moldering
echinacea, wings limp and splayed:
nothing holy, no one listening.

Zoe Boyer was raised on the shore of Lake Michigan. She completed her MA in creative writing among the ponderosas in northern Arizona, and now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Her work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, Poetry South, Kelp Journal, Plainsongs, RockPaperPoem, West Trade Review, Little Patuxent Review, The Penn Review, and Pleiades, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Published April 15 2025