Shoulder Season
Shoulder Season
Soft light, table ring gleam,
we arrive at the long day called fall.
Yesterday we walked through the park,
followed a croaking until it became
a hollow coo, like smoke rings.
A frenzy of flapping
then leaf hush.
Tell me,
did we rise
from the ground or fall
from the cloud?
The way a raindrop
plucks a waterbody
for a moment.
This time,
perhaps,
ascending
Seasons-changing poem! We’ve had a very welcome week of rain up here — the days beginning to blur as they do in the late afternoon of the year. This poem is mostly details - small noticings of what has changed along with the weather.
I’m currently reading the novel Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov - the core premise is that they build a time clinic, a place where each floor is a different year that enables people to relive their life of a certain time. It is primarily used to serve people who are struggling with memory due to accident or disease. It has me thinking about objects that feel comfortable to me at some deep level.
In Story of a Poem by Matthew Zapruder, a memoir of fatherhood overlaid on the arc of writing a poem, this quote stuck out to me:
“After all, it is much more beautiful that a cave be a mysterious caprice of water — chained and ordered by eternal laws — than the whim of giants who have no other meaning than that of explanation.”
Pardon the stock-ish image. I found it helpful for the last stanza.
Thanks for reading.
The way a raindrop plucks a waterbody