The Dying Colors of the Fall

A poem about the passage of youth.

My father pulled me once through autumn

On a wagon, green and rumbling

Through the leaves that rose and twirled

While I, a stranger to the cold, watched them ride

Upon the whispers of a creeping winter

That I would not soon know.

Frantic creatures flew about the grass"

But not I"

I had him that pulled me ever forth,

Whose humming voice the howling cold did stay,

Whose legs the shaking wagon constant moved

To keep his child from drowning in the grey.

I had him.

 

 

And more than all the textured winds and dying colors

of that distant fall,

I remember him.

That force that forward went.

That hand that round the wagon’s handle curled

And pulled "white, rough, cracked, tight.

I knew not then, but now, I think, I do"

The weight of that green wagon that he led

Rumbling through the autumn.

 

 

Here I sit upon these brittle, dusty leaves,

Cold amidst a foreign fall, and see

My hands not so unlike the ones that then I saw.

Calloused fingers shining round the pen they pull,

Pulling forth the sorrow of a voiceless child,

A blind and voiceless, crying child,

An old and joyless, hapless child

Who listens in the wind for that deep and seasoned hum

That like the leaves would ride the twisting air,

But learns that when the fruitless day is done

The frosted breeze is old and hard and bare.

Reviews

[Rose Kavanagh]

This poem is wonderfully written and filled with emotion.

"I had him that pulled me ever forth,
Whose humming voice the howling cold did stay,
Whose legs the shaking wagon constant moved
To keep his child from drowning in the grey.
I had him."

I love these lines, they convey so much with so few words. Great work! :)

[Johannes Nelson]

Thank you. I am glad you enjoyed this!

[Guilt]

Wow! What a shivering trip through skips of time. This is exemplary writing. You place the reader in a nook of observation. A crunchy timeline, lined with dead leaves and dead skin. Thank you for sharing this. I look forward to more of your poems.

- Guilt

[Johannes Nelson]

Yes, I wanted time to collapse a bit. I wished it would collapse more than it did, but I am glad you got a sense of it!