Painting by Elaine Brown Folgar
Please talk some sense into her
because we don't want Autumn to leave.
We want her shiny brass sax
flaming our trees, her notes iron-clad, soldering
red and gold leaves to their branches
to prove her love. But we can't keep her
from leaving. She dissipates by noon
into a fogbank, and we're back to snow and ice
washboarding the sidewalks. We waddle
like penguins to balance our steps. This makes
Winter laugh. She never fears falling because
she doesn't have bones, and I'm over here
with a pitchfork to steady myself as I walk
with Polartec gloves and Merino socks
in these safe barns of rubber-tread boots.
The ice breaks and the puddle stage-master
recasts mud as the star, center stage. Clouds
applaud with unfrozen rain which ushers
in Spring while Winter exits quietly stage west.
Spring's a showstopper with chartreuse hair. She
trills with the chirping bird of her tongue,
her petaled feet poised on the lawn. A chorus
of red tulips lifts us onto our feet, we
put on our shades and welcome the bees.
They don't want to die any more than we do,
probably most of all Sun who shows up overhead, rowdy
and fiery and tossing watermelon jolly ranchers
to us, but you know I exaggerate. It's the intense
way his heat pelts us like falling rocks
the signs on mountain roads warn us about.
Summer reminds us how to open
a cellophane wrapper in a chilly air-conditioned
movie theater without the rustle that turns heads.
No one notices Autumn in the dark corner
of the last row in the balcony with a leaf-
embellished scarf hiding her auburn hair.
