This month Women Writing for (a) Change-Bloomington poets are participating in National Poetry Writing Month. Every day we will offer up a new poem by a writer in our community. Check back after 6:00pm for the Prompt of the Day and the selected resulting poem.
Day 25: Season Poem by Amy Lifton
Nature’s last hurrah, everything trying to outshine the other,
a richer red, a more royal purple, a brighter gold, under
the deepest clearest blue sky of all time, the sun’s warmth
most soothing, the air’s crispness most invigorating, as if to say,
enjoy it while you can, the monochromatic cold season is next.
Catalogs arrive from Saks and Fields, offering luxuriant texture:
lush mohair, thick camels hair, soft woolen tweeds and plaids,
and one special color heralded as the color of the season:
plum, eggplant, olive, russet. We go shopping, we stop for tea.
Woodsmoke drifts along currents of warm air in the cool evenings,
and the scent of burning leaves fills the late afternoons, though we
children delight in wrecking the huge leaf piles our fathers raked,
and come inside covered in flakes of leaf, bits of milkweed fluff.
We go apple picking, walk down rows of low trees laden with
red, green, and golden globes, we carve amber pumpkins, display
purple Indian corn, stuff cornucopias with garnet pomegranates,
violet grapes, tiny orange kumquats and golden bananas. What is
the one true thing of fall, if not nostalgic, abundant glory?