Summer Postmortem

summer is dead i found her green leaf body

at the foot of an oak in the first snow

blanketing the valley the smell of diesel

100 feet downridge there’s a fallen nest

woven from strips of wild gravevine bark

the trees are becoming more and more vacant

though they shriek and moan in the wind

i remember what jesus said about new wine

and old wine skins like this katydid lasting

long enough to be filled with the unknown

like this spruce weeping white beards of sap

from dozens of rows of sapsucker-drilled wells

and all those wounds somehow still open

summer is dead they crucified her

two deer bound past without seeing me

pursued as they are by one with antlers

holding them high almost shining

his rack as the hunters call it his naked tree