Tag: rhyme

Autumn Song

Afternoon in late September

AUTUMN SONG

Afternoon in late September
Shows us signs we both can follow,
Shadows where there were no shadows
Days before, encroach on meadows,
Turning brittle brown and yellow.
Six o’clock’s a dying ember
Causing grown men to remember
Another fall’s disturbing echo.

When, unnoticed, fell the first leaves,
Yellow elm leave tired of sunshine?
Who suspected seeing such ease
When the first chill stunned the green vine?
Is embarrassment the reason
Sumac’s crimson hides its poison?
When was foliage last so supine?

Rainy night in mid-October
Brings the icy confirmation —
Twigs encased in shiny coffins
Clenched in cold that never softens.
Even daylight’s ministration
Alters no repose so sober
As the sleep of mid-October,
Sleep of spreading desolation

That day we lay …

Lake of the Isles, Minneapolis
Lake of the Isles, Minneapolis

More than 40 years ago I read a poem by my friend and childhood schoolmate John Marquand that stuck with me all these years. It had something to do with love and a town in Colorado.

My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I think it started, “Remember the way we lay in Ouray ….” There was something about that repeated internal rhyme that knocked me out.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember any more of the poem. Years later I asked John about it and he couldn’t remember it either. Sadly, it may be lost forever.

That rhyme was kicking around in my brain recently and it inspired a poem about another experience in another place. It was Minneapolis, and it involved rediscovering love against all odds.

That Day We Lay Upon the Grass

That day we lay upon the grass,
A luminescent green.
The sparks that arced from arm to arm
Across the space between.

Our bodies quickened by the sun,
The willow leaves aflush,
The sunlight sparkling on the lake,
Our blood bestirred to rush.

Up and down the parkway, flowers
Enticing with their blooms,
Our loveless winter ended there,
Emerging from our tombs

For we had slept as sleepers sleep,
Unmindful of the world,
Astonishingly we awoke,
Much like a rose unfurled.