et in arcadia ego by Jacob Dimpsey

et in arcadia ego

i mourn spring in arcadia as if

it has already withered away to

winter, though the cherry blossoms

have yet to unfurl and the fields

are still unsown, scattered with

the husks of last autumn’s harvest.

but you, you’d rather i walk along the road

to collect easter flowers with you

to fill your mother’s vase in the bay window

where i’ll watch them slowly grow limp

even as you change the water every day.

you are propagating your honey locust

trees in the front yard, cutting young twigs

from the branch and peeling back thin bark,

preparing them to be set in the ground upright

once the cambium underneath has toughened

from green to yellow and the earth is warm

enough to open itself to new life.

now the farmers are cleaning their cultivators

and sweeping their barn floors. the valley smells

of burning oil and gasoline when you open the

windows to let in a breeze. i complain but you

just shrug and smile.

i hit a deer on the way home from work yesterday.

you helped me load her body into the bed of my

truck. touching her sad jaw you said, “it’s mating

season” and then we drove up to the woods behind

our house and buried her along the tree line, piling

the earth into a mound over her body. you transplanted

chrysanthemum roots from your flower bed and patted

the soil and said, “there” and like a child, i wept.

Jacob Dimpsey is a senior creative writing major at Susquehanna University. He works at Walmart where social distancing is nearly impossible and lives in Lykens, PA. If he weren’t stuck at home, he would be at school, getting the in-person, classroom education he paid for.