This Autumn

The seventh inning stretch of seasons.

Aging is a slow theft of just about every physical thing that you had when you were younger but it does confer some benefits, if you’re paying attention. This poem has a sepia feel as nostalgia often does.

I think poets should, above all things, be noticing what goes on around them. This is a new kind of poem for me and I’m not even sure why, but it arrived in a strange fashion and it proceeded the same way. I don’t even know what I have here because I had very little sense of control. Sometimes the creative process is just plain peculiar in entirely new ways of weird. I have a hard time getting comfortable with the fact that the very act of creativity is constantly changing and I must go along for the ride or die. Sometimes I want to say, “Can’t we just do bumper cars today?” Somedays I just want, or I think I want, something safe, some easily recognizable path to go down but creativity has other plans. I could never drink enough to become a blackout drunk but sometimes I am a blackout poet. I come to, I look at the page and I say, “What happened? What is that thing?”

I think that most people don’t care a jot for all this yakking preamble but those people are likely to just jump down to the poem anyway. But there are some Substackers that like this “peak behind the curtain stuff” and this is for them.

                     This Autumn

            I can barely recall Spring.
            I was a comet, a sparkler
           sprinting across the lawn,
           creating vague retinal art,
       fizzing out before the treeline.
                   As fast as I was,
           I outran nearly everything.

         Summer I remember better.
         Houses erupted around me,
         my hammer barely gripped.
              I roared on roof peaks,
     swatted problems like slow flies
                and slower pitches.
           I asked simple questions.
             I knew all the answers.
             Certainties abounded.

                     But I can feel,
         upon me now, this autumn.
            We are both a little tired,
          not from today’s exertions
         but from all the days before.
          We woke weary but aware
          that today’s light is shorter
       and soon enough all frolicking
          will be muted by overcoats.
            In this slowly failing light
         we must make what we can,
                     while we can.

              I miss all the certainty
           of the earlier seasons like
      an old love that never was true,
              but also unforgettable.

    There could be an Indian summer,
         but that’s merely a reprieve,
                  a temporary stay,
before the necessary fires of October
      and the embers that will follow.
           November and December
     will mercilessly blow and snatch
       the last leaves from the trees.

             There may be no more
       leaping into leaves piled high
                and pausing inside,
     astounded by the perfect smell
                that surrounds you,
                all so unforgettable.

   I have always scattered my ashes
             among the flower beds
    or where the moss wants to grow.
     I shook out the fine gray powder
             at the base of the trees,
                then all the way out
             to their branches’ span,
            echoing the roots below.

       That then, may be my dream;
 some ashes, some leaves to worship
                 as I let slip my grip.