Pumpkins thrown
from a blue pickup
can’t be scraped up
whole. They wait
in the road, envelopes
of seeds in the
dead letter office.
A bevy of apples
from the other side
of the lake
bob playfully—
“Return to Sender.”
A maple leaf
carried by the wind
and pressed flat
against my cheek
has red palm
lines too delicate
to read.
Tiny missives of rain
precede the snow.
The dog seals
autumn with his paw
pressed hard
in the last
of this year’s mud.
Gwen Hart
Gwen Hart grew up outside of Cleveland, Ohio, on Lake Erie. She teaches writing at Montana State University– Northern on the Hi-Line in Havre, Montana. Her second collection of poetry, The Empress of Kisses, won the X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize from Texas Review Press. Her poems have appeared recently in Funicular Magazine, Midwest Review, and Great Plains Review.