September
A road like brown ribbon,
A sky that is blue,
A forest of green
With the sky peeping through.
Asters, deep purple,
A grasshopper’s call,
Today it is summer,
Tomorrow is fall.
– Edwina Fallis

Do you remember summer?
Where it went, what – everything – it held

in its arms. I wrote you a summer poem,
back then, about grasses and fritillaries

before our first baby was born
before the fall, before it all

came crashing down. No one would’ve ever
believed it, least of all we, twined two-in-one

and everyone would say
that “they’re forever”: they’d say that

What didn’t we understand? That only nothing lasts?
I wrote for you a wisp of whisperwind

in my romantic voice, so long ago, now figmentary
I spun to you in life, in love

to tell you what your loving meant to me: in sum,
mere everything; night’s chamber music, minuets

August afternoons asleep in shifting sands or swimmingly
in shallows; how you rescued my ring that day at Dionis

The newtpads in the rearview mirror, the diving osprey,
musk ox yarn, and bleuets and green eggs, tide going out

into the ocean, you paddling your beautiful boat
in a saltwater cove, a cup filled up with tears.

Pale yester years, when grasshoppers’ calls meant
nothing. I call you now to tell you

that I loved you in that rosehip summer
and in every sweet soft season.

And this: I love you still and always will.
Will you remember?

* * *

This entry was posted on Monday, August 23rd, 2010 at 00:01 and is filed under Poetry/Literature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.