Alex Streiff

The Natural Way

Listen to Dustin Junkert read his piece:

 A. A violent order is disorder; and
 B. A great disorder is an order

  —Wallace Stevens

If herbs grow faster the more you rip them to pieces—
and they do; if apples are almost impossible
to get without wax all over them—and they are;

if you fill with despair only as soon as you fill with hope,
and if all this is part of the natural order (or, better, the natural way),
then I know why everything happening in March

is irrelevant in August. The New Year,
a commemoration of the dramatic changes taking place
as December and January mutely brush shoulders.

To the Swift for whom the entire forest is a single nest—
we pray. No, we cannot go back to that.
You will not feel at home until you are at home.

Alex Streiff is the fiction editor of The Journal.