In Praise of October, Our Losses Bound in Silk
Ronda Broatch
Someone paints loss the color of autumn, an omen rewritten
as symptom, the way women come with food for the soul
when death eats the copious colors of life, leaves a glorious
cusp, a cup of mistakes. How often I have been mistaken,
my face to the leaves and mosses, muddling dew for the door
like a mouth closing halfway, the tardigrades set afloat
in a globe where what’s real is upside down. I pick stories
to fill my baskets, to line the casket, to cushion the cruel ground –
all those heavy feet, reminders of what frays, leaf spines
and fish bones. What could possibly possess me, what blessed
indecency swallow me in its lacy and webbed mesh, wrap me
gossamer and sticky? Someone sprinkles ash dust, honest
and merciless, and I mistake love for erasure. Woman, trust me,
says the animal of arrival, piercing every nothing with grace.
Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Lake of Fallen Constellations, (MoonPath Press). Ronda’s current manuscript was a finalist with the Charles B. Wheeler Prize and Four Way Books Levis Prize. She is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant. Ronda’s journal publications include Blackbird, 2River, Sycamore Review, Missouri Review, Palette Poetry, and Public Radio KUOW’s All Things Considered.