A short story of playful payback or wind and heart force

Tree leaves clatter on the attic

and wake you up this morning,

that might be fragile otherwise.

A tile rattles – not in your brain,

and geese are flying in a V or A,

a cloud collides with the sunlight.

A cyclist on the river dike makes

a u-turn, left or right. He asks me

for resilience in limbs and mind.

The yard path is full of my gold,

sees the beech from which it falls.

“At my feet,” says a human being.

Ah, if I had those – who speaks? –

I’d be happy to play games there,                 

with a labrador, blackbird and cat.

Some people sweep it madly clean,

afraid of a hedgehog or nearing rain,

one wrong step, neighbor’s mean eye.

Who has no idea of a branch,

hanging low with sweet-mad sadness,

cracking and crashing right beside or smack on….?

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Arno Bohlmeijer is the winner of a PEN America Grant 2021, poet and novelist writing in English and Dutch, published in six countries – US: Houghton Mifflin, and in Universal Oneness: Anthology of Magnum Opus Poems from around the World. His novel Narrowly will appear September 23, about rare solidarity. www.arnobohlmeijer.com