By Binx R Perino

Summer sucks verdant life
out of our yards. Over firs,
the burning sky wears a haze.
You tell me you haven’t slept

right in months, the same dream
turns you over each night:
A rabbit pokes its twitching nose
out of the brush. You follow it

to the edge of the river, where water
isn’t really water anymore,
it shines like tarmac. The rabbit dives
into darkness, hardly a ripple.

You lean and wait. It rises,
the life of its small eye dulled
and its limbs tucked like a toy.
When a bird that’s not a bird

drops its mechanical claw, you wake.
We watch the sky turn purple,
bite into peaches, and listen
to the seagulls’ bicker. They shake

their wings by the low tide.
You say they should set out
to migrate soon, but each generation
grows confused by milder winters.

Seagulls fly off, rabbits curry
through the yard; we are left
to consider tomorrow’s tarmac.