I: An Ode To Autumn

Oh! If I could touch an inch of Autumn

And measure Fall in feet,

I might scale its depths to chart the bottom

And feel the Winter heat.

Alas, no meters mark by foot the path

Through wooded maze of trees

Where leaves like life will wilt

In winded wake of wrath

In gusts blown cruel and dumb

To lay at feet to span each foot

The dust each clever leaf here does become.

As seasons pass and cast

My bone layered into stone,

Let August dig for me a grave in brown

Barrow beneath her loam.

Pray not a lover find these shards on shore

I am no edge to skip

Atop the waves of fancy

But under weight sunk roar

Where, offset, tides will rise

To breach the sodden dike

And drown with wave the lazing lovers’ sigh.

To life I came already old and grim

But now the chill sets in;

Each breath in gasp dispels to steam

Of Spring now waning thin.

• March 2025

Submission History

Date	Publication	Status
March 27, 2025	Think Journal	Rejected
April 27, 2025	Frontier Poetry	Pending
May 10, 2025	North Appalachia Review	Pending