To gully
Settlers dispute by a muddy creek
over land rights and property but
patience erodes, and a gully knife
stays with the body it sliced.
A gully guts a man;
gully
gul·ly | \‘gə-lē \
(noun)
1 : a large knife
2 : a trench which was originally worn in the earth by running water
and through which water often runs after it rains
3 : a small valley or gulch
(verb)
gullied ; gullying
transitive verb
: to make gullies in
intransitive verb
: to undergo erosion : form gullies
A gully guts the earth.
A boy in Converse slides down slopes of dried leaves,
leaving trails of bare mud exposed.
Before they happen upon an oversized knife—
life stolen by the gully.
Time is both body and landscape, forever changing
forms, but experience sticks in our minds.
Daniel Fleischman is a senior at SUNY Geneseo. He studies creative writing and biology because he believes salamanders are worth writing about, too. At home in Ossining, New York, he can be found running into spiderwebs as he daydreams in nature preserves or admiring his pet cocker spaniel between budget horror movies.