In order to view this poem with the line breaks the author intended, we suggest reading it on a computer screen or in landscape orientation on your phone or tablet.

Untethered

September crickets chirr in sunbeams;

Maple leaves unlatch, descend

Toward a honeybee entrapped on milkweed’s

Lavender bed. The body stiffens, held

By twin horns of the flower, compound eyes

Still straining, tongue still tipped with

Sugary globes. A nearby chrysalis opens

Slowly to a call for work,

An end to the intransigence of autumn,

For an uplift of the wings above

The dalliance of a midday breeze—

To sweep across the hills of piercing

Wind, the shafts of broken light.

—
Walt Franklin is an upstate New York writer/naturalist with a longstanding interest in the American Southwest. He has recent books issued from Foothills Publishing and Wood Thrush Books.

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