An elegy for Frost

I found a penny on the concrete slab, not saved, not spent—just a dull shield, smelling like rain that never made it warm. It carried the sound of a lock clicking shut.

The trees are finally honest: stripped down to bone architecture, a black geometry sewn across the sky. The bark is the color of old, dry blood on a rag, a sponge for every minor cruelty absorbed.

The light doesn't fall; it glazes. It’s a thin, sharp varnish over the pine’s first tear. Listen.

There is no music here. Only the low, guttural growl of the neighbor’s furnace catching hold. That last squash on the porch? It’s the yellow-gold color of a late, desperate sun. I touch its skin. It feels like the sun-bleached fender of a car nobody bothered to tow away.

I lift my hand. The silver dust, the fine sediment of settling, is already clinging to my nails. This is the last, brittle thing I offer before the necessary freeze.