Keren Valin Osgood

University of Illinois

Urbana Champaign

You I always envision

blown about Petersburg’s gray-dark alleys,

fall’s last decaying leaf

born away on the Neva,

which someday will melt, and overflow this earth.

And that leaf – red,

burning long ago,

eaten by the worms underground

to enrich the soil –

trembles yet in fresh veins.

I agree

that man will never be an anthill

– he would rather smash his own creation –

that sometimes two times

two equals five.

But blind to you, now frozen, we neglect

to digest, or till the earth.

I met you in your underground,

a fellow worm along the way,

felt the heat of you breathed through my skin,

burned with you till death

and woke, cheeks etched with hot tears.

Thrashing, delirious with fever,

stumbling into the snow-wet street,

I open my bleeding eyes

and fall at the foot of a naked tree,

digging.

In my cool palm, laced with blue veins,

the blizzard steals away brown bloodless leaf rot.