Low lying clouds are stifling street sounds.
Cars, absent from driveways, front doors stay
shut, blackout screens cling to the home fronts.
Town grows more silent, plainer. An engine revs
somewhere beyond a slate grey roof top.
Or, someone is burning trash, or burning a house—
or it’s that rare glimpse when we see
a soul depart.
Inside the back garden, furrows
have hardened to frozen scars. The last tomato vine
sags over its wire cage then stiffens in fixed
spasm. Blackberry briars turn wooden,
their rust colored spikes exposed.
Blood has slowed;
color has faded; each withdrawn into their own healing.
Within this cavernous house only a clock pendulum
moves, each ticking gear tooth a light step toward
some horizon. Dry fingers release the venetian blinds;
eyes shut. An internal chant keeps pace
with the pendulum—beware—beware
with the gunpowder volley through artery walls—
in solitary thought the voice becomes
repair—repair—winter comes, eyes shut.
For weeks we become shapeless, slipping behind walls.
—D.A. Gray spends his time as a full-time graduate student at Texas A&M-Central Texas in the spring and fall, and as an MFA candidate at Sewanee School of Letters in the summer. Gray has published one book of poetry, Overwatch, Grey Sparrow Press, November 2011. His work can be found in The Sewanee Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, Appalachian Heritage, Kentucky Review, and other literary journals.