Autumn – Cat Dixon

With rake and trash bags in hand, my son predicts rain.

The sky with its parallel lines looks like a cornfield

with blue dirt, or like a map of a city well-planned,

except for the lack of cross streets, or like a thousand

long albino eels scurrying to the horizon.

How do you know it’s going to rain?

He points to the formation—a harbinger

for precipitation. I haven’t heard that word

in years and wonder at its use. Bent over,

he piles the leaves, but the wind interrupts his work,

and the raking turns into a Sisyphean task. I tell him

to wait for another day, but he insists that it must be

done today—before the mud and wet leaves

make the chore more of a hassle. An hour later,

he presents three tied-closed bags waiting on the curb.

The clouds look like ribbons. Yes, even the sky is a gift.

Cat Dixon

Cat Dixon is the author of EVA and TOO HEAVY TO CARRY (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2016, 2014) and her chapbook, THE BOOK OF LEVINSON, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2017. She has poems (co-written with Trent Walters) in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (Black Lawrence Press, 2018).