Shedding Season

Burgundy cut-outs against the blue
November sky, sugar maple leaves
embody this long year. 

How many times have I longed to ride
suspended on your wings, aloft
and feather-skidded, shielded

from hooves of days, from their crunch
and trample in the hooded valley.
How often I have wanted the ruby treasure 

casket to stay flung open, the amber-glazed
moment trapped, as if God
could be held in crumbling human hands.

You set the wind to shred and rend
the branches. You tear 
the incarnadine mask, leaf over stem, and for the first time
 
I am ready for the rush and scissures. Take
and drive the blazing dead things. 
Heave me bare.

Laura Reece Hogan is the author of Butterfly Nebula (Backwaters, University of Nebraska Press), Litany of Flights (Paraclete Press), the chapbook O Garden-Dweller (Finishing Line), and the nonfiction book I Live, No Longer I (Wipf & Stock).