My yard is dead.

My sunflowers, now, are only stalks,

But maybe this is a season 

Of passive rest

And contemplation?

Yet even as I write,

I see the squirrels

Digging up and eating the seeds 

They planted when 

The summer shifted down into autumn.

But they will leave a few of them,

Maybe purposely?

And the machine we know

As earth, going round the gear called sun,

Will crack them open one by one

And turn them green,

And shoot them from the cold grey dirt

And up into the cog that we call spring.

But for today,

Everything says,

“Enough is enough,”

And pulls the covers up into neutral again 

For another coast into

The long winter’s nap I call “The Winter Blues.”

-jenn