I sit in my occasionally humorous decline

looking out rain-streaked windows

(like I was a teen-ager again grasping to handle

my deepest convulsions of emotion

with the blunt claws of cliche)

at the wet Autumn day

this season wasn't as colorful

as the drenching summer led me to believe it would be

but we did get the brightest yellow leaves

full and first with russets and deep reds appearing now

later in the shortening daylight

the early cool and gray skies did remind me

of going back to school after the long (to we children)

hiatus and all our lives long we're imprinted with that

sense that September is always the start

of the New Year (the Jews certainly know what I'm sayin

L'Shana Tova belatedly)

there's no need to belabor the perpetual designs

and reduce them to a trite simplicity

no need to do that

as the deep reds of age flush the bloodstream

in the dark of the coming solstice

that three days hanging turns again to the light

which one of these turnings of the year

will be the last one I see with these eyes?

which one of these windows into Infinity

will be the one I look through and follow

my vision into...?

Content (c) 2008-2011 Philip Milito.