Here at the half of autumn
when the leaves fall and don’t
fall, every path feels like a path.
There is no ignoring that every
moment matters. A wind comes.
Another half of the golden grove is gone.
Last night I met a man who lost his mother.
He was on a beach in Wales when she died
in Oregon. The waves did not speak the news:
She’s gone. She’s gone. He wishes he
could have just one more conversation with her
to tell her that he loves her. And I want
to tell him she hears what he feels. But
neither of us would believe it.
Tonight I sat on a plane beside a man,
so close we had to work to not touch,
and never once did we look at each other.
I sat beside him, dumb, pretending to sleep.
This is how it feels inside autumn,
as if the structure of things is starting to show—
whatever is glittersome,
lush, green or gold, is falling
away to reveal whatever is open,
emptying, swaying.
R. last line of second stanza, “is gone” doesn’t feel right. Maybe action words, like, “blows away” else, this is such a strong and lovely poem.
Thank you. 🙂 J.
Brilliant: as if the structure is starting to show..
I do love how you bring this one around to the ending. The poem moves very much as a narrative, with the story unfolding in quick encounters, but the ending deepens so much the apparently simple experiences.
Two men, um… seems right. One mother, gone past gold. I like the distance details between the man and his mother. And I like how you cramp that same distance on the plane.
At first I had to struggle a bit with locations, the starting with “here” in such stark contrast to Wales and Oregon and then you on the plane. I think a second and third reading explained those leaps away for me, and anyway, I can’t see how to indicate the changes in location more clearly except perhaps by stanza break, though I like the triplets.