Dear Autumn

Dear Autumn,

As the winter

Chases the last of the summer

Around the moon

You arrive in a chariot

And leave in a procession

Dear Autumn, who gives us poetry

Dear Autumn, who departs without her bounty

Dear Autumn, who teaches us to cherish

The things we let melt in the snow

Or burn off in the sun

Autumn, who led me to Spring

But wouldn’t let me fall in love

Because nothing will last

And everything will change

Beneath the tree house my mother made me

I found messages from Sunday’s

And lost Thanksgivings

They were letters to a girl

I never met

Because she lived across the street

And only went on dates with boys

Who told funny stories

And smoked stolen cigarettes

I wrote the letters

And buried them in my backyard

But when you write a love letter in Autumn

She keeps it in her pocket

And brings it to harvest

When the time is right

When my mother was sick

I returned home

And climbed up into

The old treehouse

Wondering when the ceiling got so low

And the wood so worn

Across the street

I saw a woman sitting on her front steps

Looking left behind

Looking like she forgot something

Looking like the weather turned cold

Before she could put on a sweater

I wanted to give her my sweater

Dear Autumn, upon further inspection

I realized who that woman was

She was the girl who loved the boys

With the jokes and the cigarettes

And the motorcycles

And the strong chins

And the bad attitudes

And the dangerous lives

But something about the way

She cracked her knuckles

And closed her eyes

And it made me understand

That you don’t fall in love with someone

Because of what they do

Or say

You fall in love

At a gesture

At the suggestion of a gesture

At the smallest hint

Of what the rest of your life could be

You tumble

You don’t just fall

You fall down

And so I did

Right out of the treehouse

Autumn, it was very embarrassing

Landing on the ground

And finding all those old messages

I had written

When my heart was young

And my pen was dramatic

The flourish of my ‘E’s

Was enough to leave the older, wiser me

Breathless

At a long, lost confidence

The run-on sentences

The hurried punctuation

The way letters dip below their designated line

I sat there with what I assumed was a broken everything
And waited to see whether my injuries

Or embarrassment

Would kill me first

Then I heard a voice tell me to lay still

Not to move

That I would only hurt myself further

That help was on the way

In that moment, I heard knuckles crack

And I knew that the leaves were changing

And that things were turning from soft to crisp

Dear Autumn, I heard the crackle of bonfires

And the ringing of school bells

I felt part of life disappear

And another part arrive

It made me think about

How reemerge

After they’ve been away

For awhile

Summer drifts by when it enters our lives

Winter knocks on the window

Spring we find on our couch one morning

Watching television and eating sugary cereal

But Autumn appears

When you need her

She rides in on a chariot

Bringing poetry

And memories

And a bounty she’ll leave behind

And she teaches us to cherish

Whatever we’ve got left