Simon Jerome Angel, Jr.

Finally fall. At last the mist, heat’s haze, we woke these past weeks with has lifted. We find ourselves chill, a briskness we hug ourselves in. Frost greying the ground. Grief might be easy if there wasn’t still such beauty — would be far simpler if the silver maple didn’t thrust it’s leaves into flame, trusting that spring will find it again. All this might be easier if there wasn’t a song still lifting us above it, if wind didn’t trouble my mind like water. I half expect to see you fill the autumn air like breath — At night I sleep on clenched fists. Days I’m like the child who on the playground falls, crying not so much from pain as surprise. I’m tired of tide taking you away, then back again — what’s worse, the forgetting or the thing you can’t forget. Neither yet — last summer’s choir of crickets grown quiet. ~ Kevin Young