The Obligatory Autumn Poem

Falling Colors

It’s November

We have used up

Our allotment of color for this year;

The pigment wells have run dry

Colors are draining from the landscape.

Inexorable fading

Among the maples after a drunken Halloween binge

The reds wither in unpicked apples or

Go into hiding –

Submerged as cranberries or

Crouching in the holly

Yellows and greens

Have more stamina but even they

Are sinking quickly, visibly, into the soil.

On a warm day

The blue sky

Is tepid and wan

And my energy filters

Down through my numb, wiggling toes

Chasing the colors

Flexing in hopes of priming the pump

Even as I succumb to the unfulfilled promise

Of a long winter’s nap.

November 2009