I have enough years that mid-night obsessions
most often fix on the ways my body wastes away,
how at some point I will no longer lie in this bed,
but disintegrate like the leaves on the floor of a stand of aspen:
spilled coins, gold, silver, copper echoes
of a handful of pebbles in the well.
Remember how we quaked in unison,
scalloped hearts and stemmed handles?
How our roots shrugged snow from our spines
and shared the codes that let us survive
even as chlorophyll abandoned us,
as red left our foliage.
Do sleeping aspens dream
the same dream
the winter long?
The looming wave?
The unfamiliar neighborhood—
the one where
everything you
is not you.
Elaine Mintzer’s work has been published in Scientific American, Anacapa Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and One Art. She is the author of two volumes of poetry: Natural Selections, (Bombshelter Press), and Drink from the River (Moon Tide Press) [available August 2026].
