Clean Sweep

by Amy Soricelli

You have gathered up like leaves - all the colors bright with old promise
fresh off the tree, dangling...left over from summer.
They have not escaped the random car whose tires race across the blank seasonless street
it cares so little where the traces of summer end up.
Wndshields protected -shadows and suns.
I have piled the small, compact spaces in my heart with sudden bursts of no-where air -
whispering through the silences that you carry tight-fisted, on-guard.
Down the long narrow straights of your imagination you make a snowman out of paper cups;
lone carrots found straight up in a garden.
The spidery veins from the edges of you - crush like ash in the palm of my hand;
how much of ourselves can we gather in our arms to share - how much can we hold through the season -
its desperate efforts to shield itself from every stark drop of rain.
There is nothing in the mist we can use.
It died with the july breezes.
You can sweep it away now.