Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem, every Thursday.

Poem Faux Empyrean

I have no vested interest in falling leaves.
I like bright afternoons, a perennial event,
I even drag a rake like a festival participant.
Maybe the robins know if this angers trees.
Maybe the quaking rage of trees can cause
sap to bubble and rise, rise and burst
next spring in a profusion of pink buds.
How calm trees seem when sky is orange,
when flames lick the forest over the hills,
when smoke courses and streams,
like incinerating angels descending.

I have no vestigial interest in fading lines,
now falling after just a few lines. Leaves
from the red maple remain too green like
a recipe that didn’t come off. Maybe
overcooked by summer heat, maybe
the accustomed crimson is a mere misfire.
Now a blue jay commandeers the tree
barking about a robin’s nest. Not
nice, not neighborly, no blue eggs
in the nest anyway. I throw my hands
up for the birds, prolific and violent.
Now two blue jays bark at each other
because traffic below the tree stopped
two years ago, or has barely returned,
they bark pandemic, pandemic, ha ha ha.

Daniel Bouchard’s most recent books are Spider Drop (Subpress) and Art & Nature (Ugly Duckling Presse). Peter Gizzi said of his work: “There’s a love of diction, of words and their histories, of things, and things as words; a highly crafted and hammered work artfully deployed.” His poems in progress examine received history and scrutinize it as manifested in painting, poetry, film, music, and monuments. He is a long distance walker and an amateur book restorer. He works in academic publishing.

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx