D. A. Gray
Nocturne
Everything not anchored to the ground
begins to move. The tin roof, on one side,
pries itself loose from the chicken coop.
The wind won’t quit its game of pulling
up the metal sheet and letting
it crash again. Wooden handled rakes
lift away from the toolshed before falling,
tapping out a quarter note pulse.
The plastic shroud above a bed
of tobacco plants has come unmoored.
One corner rises. Soon, it will lift and roll
end over end, wrap around a barbed
wire fence. Rusted points will leave
the sheet tattered. One loose end crackles,
and above farmhouse steps, a screen door opens,
strains against its hinges and slams shut
to accompany the wind’s alto whistle,
that rises around the brick edges of a world
eerily absent of lyric,
the cattle having departed
deep into the woods, dogs curled upon themselves,
and us lying in the black, pretending to sleep.
~
D.A. Gray spends his time as a full-time graduate student at Texas A&M-Central Texas in the spring and fall, and as an MFA candidate at Sewanee School of Letters in the summer. Gray has published one book of poetry, Overwatch (Grey Sparrow Press, 2011). His work can be found in The Sewanee Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, Appalachian Heritage, Kentucky Review, and other literary journals.
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