Tuesday, September 19, 2006

#149: September 19, 2006

After so long, the cool breeze on my skin
is sensuous and strange; new lovers sigh
like this, and coolly draw each other in,
tracing with smell as with another eye
the contours of themselves. So too the smell
of freshly sprouted leaf, green as its flesh,
comes to me now where all was burnt and sere
mere days ago--as if begun afresh,
the earth were building its new Eden here.

But this is fall, not spring, and so the growth
that bursts forth now is doomed as soon as born.
A false beginning, which promises both
birth and decay, evening after the morn.

Between the summer fire and winter freeze,
this bittersweet season, this autumn breeze--

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