Parting gift--autumn

Autumn has been teasing me for a few weeks now. One minute it's rainy and cold, thick with the kind of fog that chills you to the bone. The next minute, it's crisp and cool, the sun riotously crossing the sky. The leaves on the trees, too, seem undecided about what to wear each day. And so it is at the start of fall when you live in the northeast. I actually like the surprise of it--each day I get to dress for an entirely different season. Of course, this is bound to end soon...fall is truly around the next corner, with no more surprise summery days up her sleeve.

With that, I've had this poem on my mind lately. It's one I wrote years ago when I lived in Chicago, and these sorts of days were more common at the end of September...

Last Days

October

comes wafting in tonight

over the blue and yellow of

an Indian summer afternoon,

over the fumes of

the snaking rush hour.

And shadows creeping from under trees

and viaducts

swallow the last of September.

The sound of a lone cricket

chirping

tonight becomes an apparition 

of July.

Outside my eleven o'clock window

the static white noise 

of the rusting oak

pushes me into

dreams of you

over fields and seas.

K.R.

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