The leaves want to turn the season over
but the sky remains hot and the forest feels slow.
The smoke of August is gone. What remains —
the smell of dry grass, hot stone, baked mud.
Dust covers the trail’s verge. My footfall
raises more dust that settles after I pass through.
A distant woodpecker knocks
like a hesitant child at a strange door.
At the edge of the forest a blackberry bramble
the size of a windowless house.
From within a constant high thrum—a wasp nest
protected by righteous swords and a fence of thorns.
Busy busy busy they prepare to lay down for winter,
prepare to die for the seasons to come.
—
Michael Boissevain is a clinical psychologist by training and a poet by avocation, living in Victoria BC on the unceded territory of the Lekwungen speaking peoples. His poetry is forthcoming in The Brussels Review. In 1974, he attended University of Victoria’s Creative Writing program with Robin Skelton, Dirk Wynand, and John Montague. His chapbook The Long Table was shortlisted for the 2024 Raven Press Chapbook Contest. In his writing, Michael gravitates towards themes of family, the land, the environment, and the politics of the complicated world that we all inhabit.
