Father

Twenty Novembers have come and gone

With them have welcomed a world dusted in brown sugar and cinnamon

But my autumn days have been more bitter than sweet

Your beard reminded me of fall—hints of crimson and rust with a pinch of saffron

You would have been fifty-four

Hair more like a winters evening—silver with specks of snowflake and feathery frost

Despite the fallen leaves and the cold, dew-covered evenings

You will always be my spring morning, my summer afternoon