September

September is ambivalent
& tries to be summer and winter
at once but ends with a certain
dullness that is not Autumn.

I cannot read the seasons' changes
by the dressings and undressings
of trees in the sensuous woods of New York
from whose deciduous lap I came

with eyes sapphire-blue at birth
which then betrayed me and left
me brown-eyed and ordinary.
Lacking a physical appeal

I bowed thru adolescence
over the leaves of books
that turned my eyes myopic.
Now in the sweltering desert

of Mohave I renew the old passion.
Beset by a gnawing hunger
for the sweetmeat of poetry:
the taste of her blood and sinew.

May October be fair,
her skies beneficent with rain;
the insistent sun tempered
but a pleasant presence still.


1989