Alan Perry
Evacuation
for Rachel Carson
I walked to my yard
where dandelions spoke of silence
shriveled and grounded.
No longer mating
bees and flowers
drifted through sterile air
pollinating in absentia
near empty hives.
Raspberries abandoned the bushes
and fell to their spoiling
unharvested.
Monarchs flagged down
the last succulent bloom
as tainted earthworms resisted
pulls from thinning birds.
A disquieting cloud
powdered beasts and branches
and sifted into my house--
only mushrooms emerged
muted and crowned
in the growing darkness.
Alan Perry holds a BA in English from the University of Minnesota. His poems have won awards from the League of Minnesota Poets and Arizona State Poetry Society, and have appeared or are forthcoming in Gyroscope Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Gnarled Oak, and elsewhere. He and his wife divide their time between a suburb of Minneapolis and Tucson, Arizona.