Remember Autumn

• Posted on August 24, 2007 at 6:57 pm

A poem in the style of my former professor and Denver’s Poet Laureate, Chris Ransick.

Do you remember the tart-sweet days
of fall, when the sun turned to glowing

cool amber, like light through pomegranate seed,
and the earth grew drowsy for unwanted winter?

Remember the days when our words bit
harder than the brittle air and the nights

were perforated with whispered apologies and
sweetened with the promise of the new life

swimming inside me. Do not forget how,
when pressed by shocking weight of procreation,

we stood steadfast in autumn-gold light and claimed
to be ready. Never mind that we stood

separated by the space between your
ideas for us and the words you gave.

We stood. That is worth remembering, more so
than that morning the sun turned blue with cold

and that new life snuffed itself out. Forget that
and that you were standing apart from me. Take

comfort in the memory of the autumn, and the
promise of the loamy earth, who loses children

in the fall, mourns all through the blue winters,
then remakes new life in the green-sweet spring.

• Comment on Remember Autumn
• Filed under
  • Writing