The trees decide which way to go into winter:
One hems her narrow skirt scarlet.
One waits with a dog behind a white farmhouse.
One bends across an iron fence, yearning for another.
One sees her yellowed face in the mirror of a broken window.
One leans back to watch the dark stars blink out the day.
At the end of the street, the moon loosens a notch on its belt.
Deborah Landau's poems and essays have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Mudfish, New York Quarterly, Salamander, American Literature, and Critical Studies on the Feminist Subject.