Was it the Beginning of the End?
How ordinarily rain fell through the vines.
No. Not ordinary. How musically it fell as if each leaf
were a note. As if there were a choice about how to fall.
Is there a choice about how to fall?
Ask the western sun, the last scarlet leaf dangling in the wind.
Ask the soldier in battle, the pig led to slaughter.
The rain falling through the vines
was so generous we did not pay attention though
it was making a music that should have had us weeping—
as if we’d been hearing it for centuries,
and it were the last of its kind. As if the birds, leaving, knew.
Anne Pitkin’s third collection But Still, Music was published in September 2023 by Pleasure Boat Studios. Her work has most recently appeared in Jama and Cirque, and has also appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Alaska Quarterly Review, Rattle, One, and elsewhere. She is an editor emerita of Fine Madness, a poetry magazine that retired after 20 years.
Header photo by hartono subagio, courtesy Pixabay.
