Your Intersections with Nature by William Doreski

The slump of autumn invokes
bone-white sticks and mossy rocks
too stubborn to crack in frost.

You like walking in the woods
where rabid animals congregate
and spit up their little lives.

You like to see the ponds freeze
like the cataracts you someday
will have to surgically excise.

I don’t want to disparage
your intersections with nature
but you might avoid the snakes

flirting from bedrock ledges
and the spiders mapping places
too dark for the human soul.

Every year crumbles like cake.
Every summer generosity
fades like an old watercolor.

You agree that every temper
is seasonal, that the incline
to Christmas is always too steep

for us to maintain a foothold.
Yet you persist by embracing
the dying parts of the planet

and weeping over their vacancies.
Today the equinoctial storms
arrive with hail and pearly gusts.

We must stand up to them but
I wonder if you’re still committed
to the angular fate of our race.