Fall Woods

The blackbird has gone maggoty Lara stiffs at it shakes a grub off her wet nose and sneezes. Then as if fiction were uncannily real another similar bird drops out of a tree. For a short while it flutters turning in a circle around a broken neck. Lara looks at me as if to say, ‘What the heck?’ Now the bird is still one eye open to the sky. I can see clouds reflected in its eye but soon just cloudiness as life departs. Lara again does her sniffing thing. We walk on smelling the sweetness of Fall leaves as they rot into October. This is a time when death and its dissolution is still aromatic, pungent enough to mask the seasons fatal embrace. Lara sniffs at a loose pile of fallen leaves as if they were an open grave.