"The Coldening" by Kelly Gray

The leaving was such that each apple
in the orchard glassed over into ghost-form

on a single night. Centers rotted, dropped out,
only translucent orbs at the end of wooded knots remained.

A buck arrives, noses them to the ground.
His only want: to hear the shatter. First my grandmother,

then my brother. A permanent Autumn settles across my face.
Brinks become a fabric to dress in.

I practice sewing parts of my body shut:
the mouth, an ear, the space between my fingers.

At the edge of the orchard I find an owl.
Bring my hands around the middle of the algid body,

between my palms it moves as dead things move.
Still, I’m gentle as I walk the owl out of the orchard

to the place of bramble and stumps. Lay the bird out like a boat,
like a baby in the arms, like a dirge.

Slow gold light slips,
the night freeze blackens fruit trees.

I continue to visit the owl. The spiders come.
The flies, too. For a moment one of the owl’s eyes opens.

I look through the eye into the back of his death,
parts of flight and story leak out.

The collapse of the left lung: green.
The collapse of the right lung: sky.

I’ve only ever had one good dream
in 46 years of bad dreams and it was of sleeping

in a moon field with my daughter while friends
placed inocybe between my teeth.

The eye of the owl closes.
The buck says it’s peaceful here, to be with you like this.

I don’t say anything because I don’t speak anymore.
Within a streak of light, wasps fly out of the ground

as leaves fall in the orchard.
I become a ghost apple at the nose of a buck.

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Kelly Gray called us from Camp Meeker, CA.

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