Beware of Fours (poem)

Beware of Fours

Magic threes no more, beware of fours

A fear inducer without weight, absenting light, a shadow

A sense of shadow

One morning the character walks in the rain

The after-rain, the water in yellowing

Beds of flowers beaded

And closing skies of short fall days

And knows the leaves with an ease break, are sent, away

The trees have set their buds for another season

In a year of this sort, our elders

Receiving communiques via transcontinental winds

Sad, expected news, a steady dust of carbon

The trees tell one another, this is sorrow

this is the death of many fellows

I might give gold for sugar

Mercy still

But I think not

At length we take our chances

the first knell be our own loss

and they, that cannot see or smell or hear

will hear the third before they understand the fourth is near

Leaves tannery brown and dry

Part and the character feels

A feathering of displacement

The fall is not the shadow

Building to itself in increment

The shadow is of passenger pigeons

Beware of Fours

The Travelers

(2021, Stephanie Foster)