On Facebook We Find

the prescience of Einstein

who said (and I quote)

all this

<gestures broadly>

is a joke.

But my friend really did ask

three years ago:

have you done all

that America has asked

of you? What will you

say, when the time comes

to bear your own

witness? I have not

forgotten. Now it is

another golden fall,

a third year with few

red leaves, something odd

I have noticed

without confirming

the yellow that follows me

is anything more than a skewed

perspective, yes, and

it could also be a concern

we should all share.

I yelled at my mother in law

in real life because she performs

the recommended clucks and sighs, buys

all the right books

to discuss

as if talking

was a kind of doing.

But what have I done?

I hired a tree guy

to cut down two trees

leaning too earnestly

towards my roof. We get

heavy wind in these parts, so

I had them taken out.

I have lived in this house

seven years without planting

a single fruit tree.

Facebook is onto me, serves

advice and ads, now is the time

to order bare roots by mail.

Shana Ross bought her first computer working the graveyard shift in a windchime factory, then spent a good while authoring a stable life before finally turning her attention to the page. Her work has appeared in Chautauqua Journal, Ruminate, Bowery Gothic, Kissing Dynamite, SWWIM and more. She is the recipient of a 2019 Parent-Writer Fellowship to Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and serves as an editor for Luna Station Quarterly. She holds both a BA and MBA from Yale and rarely tweets @shanakatzross.