Living on as if a Burden

Toward the end of every living thing

ripe a moment beautiful that

decay sweetens in toward the pit

that on the way sheds perfection

until the skin scarcely matters

where reluctant or fierce to be done

its age that has borne the crumbling

that tells mostly gone what has been

falls away saying so far so good

Paul Hunter

Paul Hunter is a Seattle poet whose most recent farming book is “Stubble Field,” (2012, Silverfish Review Press).  These pieces hint at another farming collection—“One More Spring.” He has an autobiography in prose poems—“Clownery”—due in January, and is still a fair shade tree mechanic, if he works on a car with no brains.