Dates Of: Autumn [top]

Here is the full text for “Dates of Autumn,” an original poetic piece written in the spirit of the season.

The eighth date is a funeral and a feast— the last tomatoes, bruised but sweet, the first frost stitching silver across the grass. You take down the summer wreath, hang up the bone-white gourds. Something in you is dying, something else is being born.

On the tenth date, autumn hands you its keys. The pumpkins are collapsed, the leaves are a brown paste on the curb. You stand at the edge of the yard, breathing the last of the woodsmoke, and you realize: the dates of autumn were not appointments to keep, but thresholds to cross— each one a small permission to let go. dates of autumn

The second date comes with a clatter of dry leaves skating down the asphalt. You wear a sweater you forgot you owned, and the light tilts sideways after three o’clock.

On the seventh date, the trees stand naked without shame. The sun, tired of its own ambition, slides down the horizon by four. You light a candle before dinner because the dark has become a kind of guest. Here is the full text for “Dates of

The ninth date: the final hinge before the long cold. You walk through the orchard where nothing is left but a few stubborn crabapples and the memory of wasps. The wind has a new vocabulary— nouns like grief and rest .

The sixth date is the quietest: a fog that swallows the hills, a spider’s geometry glazed with dew, the sound of a single acorn hitting the driveway. You remember every person you have ever loved in October, and you forgive them all. Something in you is dying, something else is being born

The fourth date is a wild one— the wind tears down the maples’ modesty, shakes the oaks until they rattle their brown secrets. You find a feather caught in the screen door, and the moon is a thumbnail scraped across black paper.