The next poem I’m sharing with you appeared in Poet Lore: A National Quarterly of World Poetry, Volume 73, Number 1, Spring 1978.

Again, a long time ago.

It’s appropriately seasonal, and holds a special affection from me because the last lines were incorporated into a Christmas play I wrote at the request of my fifth grade students. The play was an unexpected Druidic Christmas Fable, full of Roman Soldiers and human sacrifice and resounding words of brotherhood shortly after the birth of Christ. Yards and yards of rather adult rhetoric which the students managed with great success. The verbiage shows a proclivity of mine to yield to adumbration, a tendency I hope not to have to apologize for. The students loved it. I hope you like it too.

AUTUMN

In the season of slow earth and the steadiness of brown 
Before the ready year can pull me down 
To die with winter in the winter black 
When white in the night the light goes back 
And stark and sluggish in a slow amaze 
Hangs the silhouette of days 
Freezing time resolves the air in glass 
Changes rocks to stones trees cannot pass 
Fits the shallow winters head 
With particles long dead 

Fill me with the sun distilled 
The desperate glory of the dying year 
Concentrate my life into 
One heavy radiance to carry through 
When cold begins 
The season of the winds