The Loss of Outer Things
Richard Luftig
Autumn is the only season
that takes the time
to whisper in your ear,
the only one able
to silence an entire
forest pine and pitch
perfect, under a November
shroud. It is a love song
of rain and hawk wind
that soaks you straight
and hard to the core,
It is the only one
that can whisk you off
to where pumpkins
and ghosts make
their annual cameo
appearance before exiting
stage left for winter.
Autumn is the only season
that reaps its own but offers fair
warning to the ripe and wizened
corn that harvest will be along
any day now. It would teach
you also, if only you would slow
down, stop for a moment,
see for yourself how
the foreshortening light
moves through windbreak
trees that turn to heartbreak,
maples, heavy with sadness,
taking their leaves
which now must fall
so close to where they were born.
Richard Luftig
Autumn is the only season
that takes the time
to whisper in your ear,
the only one able
to silence an entire
forest pine and pitch
perfect, under a November
shroud. It is a love song
of rain and hawk wind
that soaks you straight
and hard to the core,
It is the only one
that can whisk you off
to where pumpkins
and ghosts make
their annual cameo
appearance before exiting
stage left for winter.
Autumn is the only season
that reaps its own but offers fair
warning to the ripe and wizened
corn that harvest will be along
any day now. It would teach
you also, if only you would slow
down, stop for a moment,
see for yourself how
the foreshortening light
moves through windbreak
trees that turn to heartbreak,
maples, heavy with sadness,
taking their leaves
which now must fall
so close to where they were born.
