Autumn Poem
Or, Another Verse for the Fall
Here we are,
here we are again,
the equinox has fallen
as the sun has crossed over
the invisible waist of the spinning turtle.
Persephone has gone back to hell,
but all’s well,
time for harvest and reaping
and passing and weeping,
this is the season for consideration
as another year is ground into dust
under the pestle of cycle and trust
that inevitable time turns over,
as all we have is faith
borne from the length of our years
and the width of human experience
that the leaves will come back,
that green will return again,
after winter and death
and the ice of doubt
has covered us in a blanket
of darkness.
Show us now,
show us now again,
the full-throated roar
of our parasitic plight
as we discover ourselves,
a cancerous blight on this living thing,
this mythic turtle in flight,
the violence of our nature
screaming into her back because
Hades trails behind her in droplets,
and Persephone has left the door open
a crack.
– New Orleans, October 2023
