The Day Before

by Summer Koester

A devil's club graveyard all that remains,
bones of a mighty clubbed fortress
reduced to small brown skeletons,
silent, still scaffolds of what once was.
This is how you say madrugada in English–
the coldest, darkest, undead hour
when spirits roam the earth, right before
the first snow:
the rainforest so dry and quiet
bones and shapes, negative space,
the air sucked right out.