Other websites have Poetry Friday; I have most-excellent-poetry-when-I-find-it days.
This is an unpublished one from Jane Yolen’s online journal; she lost her husband last year, and I had to put my head down for a bit when I happened across it.
First Fall
- This is my first fall without,
- The leaves redder than I remember.
- Not the color of blood, which dries dark
- …But something vibrant in its dying.
- This is my first fall without,
- The mornings so cold, I wear
- One of your old sweaters over my nightgown
- And turn up the heat till the house
- Breaks out in a sweat.
- This is my first fall without,
- The horse chestnuts—conkers you called them—
- Banging down on the roof like mad raindrops
- All night long, pocking the car.
- This is my first fall without,
- The geese in their anarchic vees
- That sometimes read like an L or M,
- Head to where Connecticut and Massachusetts
- Huddle together for warmth.
- This is my first fall without.
- You have gone before me into winter,
- Into spring, into summer, somehow
- A consummate time traveler
- I can never catch up to,
- Always a season ahead.
In heart-shattering times, beauty and pain are so vividly intermingled.