Joseph Nicks

October’s Opus

since 1979

it happens every autumn

as the diminishing daylight

and the quickening air

begin to work their magic

on my dull and torpid 

summer-weary soul

and soon enough I feel 

that hunger, that thirst,

that insatiable desire

to capture every hue – 

every barely perceptible

nuance, of the landscape’s

metamorphosis into waning 

equinox

such a seemingly simple task, 

the distillation of a season 

into an inexorable ink 

that will effuse throughout the room 

and permeate these pages 

of its own unsolicited volition

and I almost pulled it off 

in 1992 and 1999, 2003, 2005, 

2015-2020 – 13 lost and lonely 

poems in 10 of these 43 years

that’s about as close as I ever came

all those other autumns simply 

slipped away unpressed

between the pages of remembrance,

each one of them a moment lost in time:

September’s song so quickly eclipsed 

by unrehearsed October’s opus –  

itself a fleeting symphony 

of reds and yellows, golden browns

all too swiftly overcome 

by November’s lament

and December’s dirge

 

the window of opportunity 

slams shut almost as soon 

as it blew open,

the brash wind-driven 

intermingling colors of the fall

predictably succumbing 

to the blinding monotonous 

whiteness of winter once again