Upon Return to
Dry California
Green New York
from
Autumn air smells of sage and dry grass. I hope they will not burn. Crepe myrtle trees line our streets with triangle clumps pointing skyward. Lacy pink, white, purple, along walkways. Out early. Some look faded and tired, others pert and bursting. Pink ladies lean in a line through fencework, saying, “It’s time for school!” Their stems resemble rhubarb. By mid-September they will heave over, toward the bent grasses, their pink will brown, stems will fall. Yarrow almost matches the dried pasture grass, making us lean forward to see its swirls. They grow near the sheep, who are the same color as their pasture, soft wool bunches eating rough strips of weeds, all of us dry, yet relieved to be out of summer’s boiling-the-skin hot. We watch musky apples fall from Gravenstein trees, pears nest beside them near old roses whose liquor stands in late-afternoon breezes. Oh, slim harvest, once bountiful branches, sheep wool, touch us so we can bear to linger where there is so little green. - Donna L. Emerson
Sarah Kinney Wake Me Not
oil on canvas
50
SANSKRIT
VOLUME 47
51