by Bryce Berkowitz
after Edward Hirsch
Today we drift through a peach orchard,
scabbed and calloused,
branches bent in black and gold angles,
while the sun sets over the prairie.
My soul hardens,
muted by this window,
while cicadas rouse the dead,
but some nights
they rouse me too.
When the soul lifts,
the body drops
and all the light trapped inside the stars
comes rushing out,
furious and bull-headed,
intent on scorching fingerprints from the scene
with a sound like electrical burning.
By morning, the soul dreams
that a pool of galaxies orbits earth,
but the body stares into a vacant orchard,
a tangled constellation of doomed angles.
Sweet low hanging fruit, break your skin for me.
Let what skies and earth do to meet in the middle.
Bryce Berkowitz is an MFA candidate at West Virginia University. He is the assistant poetry editor at Cheat River Review. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Third Coast, Passages North, The Pinch, Eleven Eleven, Tampa Review, Permafrost, Evansville Review, San Pedro River Review, Watershed Review, among other publications.
Hawaii Pacific Review 
“When the soul lifts,
the body drops
and all the light trapped inside the stars
comes rushing out …”
Lovely. I’ve written poetry all my life, and earth and stars never cease to wind themselves through various poetic themes. Aloha.