by Linda Bamber

It’s one thing when the wind blows down the leaves

another when the still air hosts them

and they float.

Yes, the trees will soon be bare

but now there’s this deliberate Happening;

this all-day, soft,

unsteady occupation of the air.

Linda Bamber is a Professor of English at Tufts University. Her poetry collection, Metropolitan Tang, and her fiction collection, Taking What I Like, were both published by David R. Godine. Bamber’s work has appeared in periodicals such as The Harvard Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, The New York Times Book Review, The Kenyon Review, Plume and The Missouri Review. Her book on Shakespeare was published by Stanford University Press. She is currently writing a novella based on the cross-country expedition of Lewis and Clark.