Jennifer Barber-II

L. B.

 

 

September

 

Only sparrows in the oak

and a hooded crow, exotic to me,

 

a two-toned back, gray over black.

 

The undersides of leaves

like mirrors.

 

“A couple of weeks or months,”

his doctor predicted in July.

 

“Sometimes we’re wrong.”

 

 

October

 

A week ago, Outside

was still part of him,

 

around the building and back

with one of us or more.

 

Today, in the window,

in the trees,

 

soundless collisions

of light and dark

 

impossible to divide,

the addictive, flickering

 

play of the leaves’ shadows

over the ground.

 

 

Variants

 

He calls the Oxycodon

Oxymoron;

 

Ativan is Atta Boy.

 

How does it go, the verse about

the sun not striking us

 

by day, nor the moon by night?

 

 

On Morphine, His Last Words

 

I have to be there by noon

 

Here is my forehead,

here is my jaw

 

Thanks for the visitation, kids

 

Are these my eyes

underneath my hand?

 

 

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