“To the Trumpet Vine” by Hannah Faith Notess

All summer I’ve been pulling up shoots 

too close to the house, unable to get at the roots 

It’s not that I don’t want you, it’s that you’re too close to home

some things can’t be too close to the foundation 

even though they belong here. I wish to change my

way of life, but not enough to wish a wet basement 

you know? The leaves are turning by the time 

the kid pulls the gleaming brass instrument 

from its battered case, borrowed from school 

and blurts his first awful notes into the cooling air. 

Someday he too will know why Summertime 

is a sad song, but not yet. First, a scale 

played to herald royalty, or the apocalypse– 

nothing confirmed except the loud clear note that will arrive 

when he masters embouchure. Down the street

the vine explodes in a riot of orange mouths 

curled around the light post— 

close enough to hear, far enough to be safe.

Hannah Faith Notess is a poet and software product manager. Her first book of poems, The Multitude, won the Michael Waters Poetry Prize from Southern Indiana Review Press. She lives with her family in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she co-runs a poetry reading series, Yellow Chair Poetry, in her house. Learn more about her work at hannahnotess.com.