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

Sonnet Nearly Forty-Five

finches fly in the claw tracks of hawks
– Dylan Thomas

September was when it started, this
annular, steady unfastening of myself
from the world. Really, that’s the best
season in which to begin to die as one
autumn-born and ever thus a celebrant
of ripe apples on the fragrant verge of rot,
a reader of the migrations of birds. Their
gray scrawl on the scudded sky is a message
of farewell. It comes round for all of us, these
things. Enjoy warm days, beware the cold;
relish youth, before we’re old.  Here I sit
harvest-hearted, storm-ready, not wiser,
on the threshold of another birthday
more than mid-way through the year.

Zachary Bos is a poet, editor, and bookseller whose work has appeared in publications including The London Magazine, Literary Imagination, and Iowa Review. He was runner-up for the James Hearst Poetry Prize, a finalist for the 92Y Discovery Prize and Disquiet Literary Prize, and recipient of the Atlanta Review International Merit Award. He directs Pen & Anvil Press and operates Bonfire Bookshop. On most social platforms as @zakbos.

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