Autumn Interrupts
#24 of poetry
This one is pretty old. I just remember I wrote it because someone, I forget who, said that the Limerick as a form was necessarily a joke and couldn't be made scary.
It's easy to forget what autumn means
In tired lands of sun-stuffed tedium;
Assassin breeze the blackfly never weans,
The forecast is extremely medium.
It's easy to forget those ragged skies
Crushed, throttled, splintered by the frigid light
That setting, cold to scent and warm to eyes,
Lets slip the wind and stirs dead leaves to flight.
And so-
-I went out walking in the night
That was not born yet. All the trees were white.
The roofs above
My head were bare.
There was no color
Anywhere
Save only in
The twisting air
Where summer's ghost was bright.
There was a narrow alley on my way
And there I met a man who bid me stay.
I saw his blood
and bones interred.
I passed both by
without a word.
Ahead of me
his footsteps heard
A thousand miles away.
Each homeward path I desperate turned my face
He stood before me, and in every place-
"The street-dust is dragging like lace
On some dark tangled edge of this place.
My gut is a stone.
The night is alone.
Come morning, they won't find a trace."
-He told me I
would die alone
And never call
my life my own.
"Remember me"
And he was gone
I ran. Nothing gave chase.
I left the twisting shadow streets behind.
I went to wash the fingers from my mind.
And so-
-whatever phantom forms may wind
Out of the cooling earth to hang in air
With leaf-ghosts dangle from the thin moon rind.
Some see them and move on. Some are still there.
The inmost heart of autumn, hardened still,
I wanted to forget. I never will.