Held in a Late Season

 

Yet another late October poem, this one by Richard O. Moore:

 

A Reminiscence

 

Held in a late season

At a shifting of worlds,

In the golden balance of autumn,

Out of love and reason

 

We made our peace;

Stood still in October

In the failing light and sought,

Each in the other, ease

 

And release from silence,

From the slow damnation

Of speech that is weak

And falls from silence.

 

In the October sun

By the green river we spoke,

Late in October, the leaves

Of the water maples had fallen.

 

But whatever we said

In the bright leaves was lost,

Quick as the leaf-fall,

Brittle and blood red.