Story Institute Imagine Your Stories Again…

The Collapse of Summer
© 2008 - Timothy Russell

Trees on the steep hillside
across the river will peak
within the next few days,
and if things follow precedent,
shed their impossible colors
soon after.
The zinnias did not mean
to let themselves get so shabby.
The old gray groundhog waddles
through the cosmos, fat and sleepy.
The children we named after purple
flowers have fled the house.
Our own bodies give in
to gravity more each day,
our bones slowly emerging.
We really used to be something,
didn’t we?