"Complicit Harvest" by Bill Schreiber

Starve the bloodless peach

seduce salt, deliver the dead

cringe back from our dark

harvest blighted pain

or harrow it into sickened humus

and wait until next year

to scythe the wilted weeds.

Wasted unwashed sludge

wet wine whilst vinegar cleans

fish hook pull the ulcerous rinds

staunch the canker, flinch from fester

watch the wild cardinals raise the righted plinth

eat the blueberry by the lake.

The bald, burned and bound

snow angel in dirt, dust done;

the poisoned cast out

snoring bears sleep beneath snows

the wounded whistling

ours, all ours.

Bill has been a Hyla Brook Poet since 2018. Bill has been published in Aerial Review, Shot Glass Journal, The Poets Touchstone and Metonym Journal. Bill works in the technology field and lives with his wife and son in southern New Hampshire.