Golden light and shadow ushers in fall.
The world tilts, slows, swirls, flashes brightness like leaves
falling—sky grows bluer as geese flocks call
the news of their migration; water grieves
their absence, grows dark and opaque, no lure
for swimmers, no need for fence to fetter.
It is the time to put forth new warm fur,
build burrows, write that long delayed letter
before the snow covers our tracks, blankets
the earth in white, sets the weak sun to burn,
before the ponds and lakes wear bracelets
of ice, now while the leaves still clutch and turn.
When winter whistles, we’ll be smugly snug,
feet up, fat cat, sipping on a steaming mug.
Melissa C. Johnson
Melissa C. Johnson is Professor and Chair of the Department of Focused Inquiry in the University College of Virginia Commonwealth University. Previously, Her work has been published in Borderlands, Waccamaw, Kakalak, The Connecticut Review, Farmer’s Market, The Potomac Review, The Cortland Review, NELLE, Green Briar Review, and other journals. Her chapbook, “Looking Twice at the World” was a winner in the 2007 South Carolina Poetry Initiative Chapbook Contest and was published by Stepping Stones Press at the University of South Carolina in 2008. A second chapbook, “Cancer Voodoo,” is forthcoming from Diode Editions in 2021.
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