Fall descends (here comes again
A seasonal verse, please humor me);
I-95, rugged spine
Of this East Coast,
Receives it indifferently,
Like a tired wife-then-mother whose
Glazed-over-eyes stare
Blankly, at her dreams
Eons in the rearview.
Rhode Island kamikaze pilots—
Pickup trucks of broken men—
Are your Law and Order for the day.
That much has not changed.
Milquetoast musings on the cycle of seasons
Have not changed much, either.
You muse anyway.
Each recollection, rumination
Lights spritely on the tumbling brooks
Of your concerns, but some sink deep
And divert the stream, and now you think
About not so beautiful things.
They don’t brush off like the crunchy leaves
From your windshield this morning.
The next step is to pull over.
Are your musings dead-on-arrival,
Wounds, or a precondition’s revival?
Poetic answers come with presuppositions:
Nothing is new about New England’s turning leaves.
Nothing is new about fearing for your life on I-95. But,
Something is new about visiting a past recently buried
And knowing it stalks the autumn wind not as new life,
But as a ghost. What else is there to do, but
Talk to it again, this time as a man, and figure why
The two of you left things where you did,
Colored only halfway last time.
