Hunting Season

by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer

The bed is the wrong bed.
The house is all wrong.

One by one,
The birds lift their nests
Away from the eaves

And fly sadly away.
Slowly, the animals
Walk backwards into the woods

And the pines walk back
Into the clouds.
There is a thick, thick fog.

The compass rusts.

It is the first day
Of open season.
They will be hunted down

And they touch each other’s faces
For the last time
Like braille.

 

Susan Frombreg Schaeffer’s second novel, Anya, was published last year to cirtical acclaim. (Spring 1975)