In Autumn

In Autumn, when my love, my unparticular love
with a dozen faces was leaving--as she is always leaving--
in Autumn, when my heart is forever about to fall--but never falls--
I bought the scent of the season of endings, like an acolyte believing.

Blue, blue, songs are like tattoos, as the lady said.
In Autumn I coccoon myself wrapped in pages where I hope to find
the Neruda or the Dickinson that will assuage this feeling
that seeps like leaf-smoke through my dreams, my grief, my mothy mind.

Now, it is rain-green June, and the vines climb outside my window
as if they saw God above them, or hungry devils below.
My heart is easier when the light is longer, though solitude is still solitude;
darkness waits as it always waits, though I love to fool myself just now, just so.

And my Knight in his armor, plucked from a rank of defenders
off the shelf at Target? He is still here, stoic and ready, aromatic and constant.
It is always Autumn inside him, a high wind residing unseen behind his pose.
Together we make two seasons, skeletal, but telling each other we are verdant,

Each filling the indifferent air with our manufactured ode;
me ever the lady and pregnant, hefting that bale, hauling that load.
______

Karin Gustafson over at Real Toads, urges us to write an ode to the quotidian. I can't imagine many things more quotidian than a can of air freshener. She suggested looking around at one's desk, and my eyes landed on my dear and treasured Woodside Library can of Glade scent. Leather & oak, it says on the side. So, I put my hair up in a bun so tight it makes my eyes cross, donned my glasses, and began shushing people so that i could write this poem.

The line about songs being like tattoos is from the Joni Mitchell song "Blue", written by her.

Fun fact to know and tell: women have a keener sense of smell than men. It's science!