Poetry

Gary J. Whitehead

Overwintering

All this fall, on the south faç ade
of our house, they've assembled—
six-legged, miniature arabesques,
black, unmoving unless I touch them.
Up close, they do move, wind-shivered
bits of autumn winged for death,
long antennae whispering,
forelegs conjecturing,
thoraces faking orange frowns.
Some have worked their way
inside the storms, died there
as if from the enterprise
and piled in the chipped sills.
I haven't caught one in the act
of squeezing through:
their invasion is a slow attrition.
But watching them, I can understand
why they've fled the box elders
to gather here in the sun's steady gaze,
out of the breeze, above the greenish scent
of these red-berried yews.
They want in.
This minute birch logs catch
behind the cast-iron, vined fireplace screen;
a pot of tea steeps atop the butcher block;
our dog, prone on the Persian rug,
runs in some summer dream;
and, daylight saving having ended,
darkness, all of a sudden, closes in.

Dismantling an Outhouse