it comes as these torrents of rain,
sandy loam overturned, earthworms,
undoing all, as all had never been: autumn.
but we leave mazes of memory
faded boards on porch-steps,
fossilized nautilus,
the bee’s strange script on the arbor’s twine
woodpecker’s abacus on the long-dead pine
a faded photo of a girl with hydrangea eyes
remnants of red clay, drops of paint
rain hisses from the earth, yearless
I peer through an amber-trapped spyglass
and it carves me open:
a thousand forgotten languages
all saying: begin.
Brianna Cunliffe is an environmental justice activist and writer from North Carolina, currently studying at Bowdoin College. She served as the 2019 artist-in-residence at the Kent Island Scientific Station in the Bay of Fundy.
Spyglass illustration by C.B. Auder.
Claw & Blossom 