Poetry Friday: Fall, by Edward Hirsch

We haven't yet reached the days of dusky gold that I know are to come, but I have felt the shiver of that shift -- the way, "Everything/Changes and moves in the split second between summer's/Sprawling past and winter's hard revision," and I know that autumn hovers, and is falling ....

Fall
by Edward Hirsch

Fall, falling, fallen. That's the way the season
Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition
With the final remaining cardinals) and then
Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last
Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager
And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun
Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
Changes and moves in the split second between summer's
Sprawling past and winter's hard revision, one moment
Pulling out of the station according to schedule,

(Read the rest here.)


The Poetry Friday roundup is at Secrets & Sharing Soda.