Falling Out

This strange, ugly and preposterous world

In me the wild will to escape unfurled

Supine and sweaty, wrung out by summer

Dreading the pale, aloof winter mummer

Bored by the green grin of stultified spring

I wanted autumn to coat everything

Drunk on the rich, dark wine of October

I wished to forget how to be sober

Through leaves rustling with russet reasons

To forget those other, lesser seasons

Fall ushers in the academic year

From it, the obtuse recoil, full of fear

The illiterate are shamed by autumn

Trees publish leaflets then, many wholesome...

Dream that each evening is All Hallows'

Thinning the veil 'twixt cradle and gallows

Convening salons with ancient, wise ghosts

Witches and goblins and black cats for hosts

Look into the glowing asymmetry

Of a jack-o-lantern's smile, there to see

Fire making a vegetable live

To passers by a weird blessing give

Forever, from introduction to end

Each year's narrative would autumn befriend

No longer would planting and waiting grind

Worried teeth, gnawing peace to the rind

Harvests without cease would become routine

All would be full and content, none too lean

Mundane, monochromatic scenes would go

Unnoticed, as gold, orange and red would flow

Across the canvas of every hour

Savor the gloaming of gentle twilight

Neither menacing dark nor starkly bright

Always interstitial, liminal time

Where opposites learn to mingle and rhyme

I ached to open the portal to fall

To leave mediocre routine in the hall

To arrest cruel change and make autumn stay

Therefore did I encode October's entrance

In symbols you can decode at a glance

The better to fall out with me, for good

Come, live in autumn; you know that you should