Ending Season by Chloe Coventry

Evening windstorms shake down 
the palm fronds and rouse the canyon’s 

clique of mangy coyotes to their brash 
and longing songs. I watch the 

liquid-amber tree’s reddened leaves waver 
like faltering words and go to ground. 

It’s fire season. Lightning has set aflame the
mountain’s parched acres and the stinging 

ashes mute the mornings to a choked silence. 
Each night I look through myself out the window 

as the blaze gnaws at the backbone of the hill. Each morning 
I wake to the brown air lagging over the sun like regret.


Chloe Coventry is a writer and ethnomusicologist living in the foothills above Los Angeles.