Autumn Rings the Bell
by Zoe Boyer
What more can I say. Yes, it aches,
but how dull, all this talk of pain.
I could tell you about the changing season,
trees hurling bloodstone leaves like mourners
shedding locks of hair. People love to be
reminded that this world is also beautiful.
But I've tired of the words for October’s certain
slant of light or the sound that wind makes
beneath the eaves. What could keep me in this
terrible rut but Earth spinning sure as a wheel?
Pavlov needn’t have turned to torture
to learn how repetition shapes the mind.
Who among us hasn’t had our thoughts honed
down to hunger at the faintest reminder;
the hour tolls, signals the slow march of
minutes and we want for a meal or drug, some
color of the sky to ease the scrape of living.
There goes the wind beneath the eaves again,
my eyes welling, though often, now,
I find I can’t recall the source of my anguish.
I only know I’m meant to rend my clothes
when the gales blow their tired whistle—
though it could just as well be
a trumpet or bell. Any instrument
could sound the hour of grief and spur
a longing that brings me to my knees.
Zoe Boyer was raised on the shore of Lake Michigan. She completed her MA in creative writing among the ponderosas in northern Arizona, and now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Her work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The Penn Review, Terrain.org, Pleiades, and Poetry South. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and selected as a finalist for Best of the Net.
