THE SOULS

Outside on a green lawn a giant water-oak conducts a sunset.
	Some unsteady hum has summoned us out of our houses.
My ancient lady friend, who lives nearby, is jawing now, and wears
	An awed-holy expression as she says they are souls, yes sir.
And they are everywhere, they wade the dusky clouds, they are
	Giant black-winged fruits hanging, falling, bouncing.  The green
Is black with them.  And neighbors stare; they worry for their

Cars and pickups.  If they get into the red berries, it's hell on
	Paint.  Shoot them.  No, they are beautiful.  They are a menace.
Look out below!  They rise and wheel, kaleidoscopic, inside rings
	Of themselves.  They set themselves against the sky, black on blue.
They caw.  They are telling themselves, or us, something.
	They caw and caw, and what is it they are saying, so
Earpiercingly, holes through your eardrums, through your brain,

As if lasered?  Then they settle again, like a black blizzard
	Of huge coal-flakes.  The souls come back to visit us, to tell
Us that they know everything now.  Now their sharp yellow beaks
	Pierce the lawn.  They are busier than worms, in a feast 
Of famishment, an ecstacy of appetite.  Now, she says,
	The nonagenarian, I'll soon be with them, and then
It's always now for me like them.  The souls have found their

Bodies.  I don't know which is which, but somewhere there
	Is everybody died, all the loved ones, and even the others,
The ones that nobody loved, they are all there now, she says.
	I stare as deep as I can see.  They are every blessed
Place—on roofs, looking down, in trees, on bushes, under,
	Over, and around.  Some seem to be waiting, some tug
At the turning-emerald lawn in the lowering light:  and now

How do they know to rise suddenly, and become one wide
	Black wing?  How do they know to circle and circle in unison,
One boomerang black wing composed of so many blood-beating,
	Sky-rowing black wings?  How do they know when it's time
To fly along a horizon, rimmed with rising red?  The souls,
	They know, they know!  I think it must be out of some distant
Folklore that the old lady speaks, eyes fixed, waving them goodbye.

—E.M. Schorb

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E.M. Schorb
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