After a November Windstorm

BY PATRICK CABELLO HANSEL

Leaves float downriver as if searching
for fathers, for voices, for lands unlearned;
birds that yesterday sang cornstalk and
sweet berry now dive into thickets ripe
with burr, seedpod and regret. All
the orange of the hallowed moon, all
the blood red sky of summer has been
blown from the world, leaving the char,
the gray, and the remnant green to poke
their noisy and humbled fingers at the sky.


Patrick Cabello Hansel is the author of the poetry collection “The Devouring Land” (Main Street Rag Publishing). He has published poems and prose in over 50 journals, including Hawai’i Pacific Review, Ilanot Review, Lunch Ticket, and Ash and Bones.  He has received awards from the Loft Literary Center and MN State Arts Board, and his poem “Quitting Time” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  He is the editor of The Phoenix of Phillips, a literary journal for and by the people of the most diverse neighborhood in Minneapolis.  He blogs about his passion for beauty and justice at www.spiritwound.blogspot.com

Image Credit: “Solitary,” Jing Lin

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