lafayette wattles

 

 

Fall

I remember when sunrise slept
longer each day reducing
each day, when morning meant
say goodbye to nowhere to get to
and life was interrupted
by angles and adverbs
and the irony of learning how
to make a tomorrow
all out of here and now,
when fun was cracking
helmets and shoulder pads
and being told not to do it that way
and weekends meant battle
meant late night trying to hang on
wait until next year
everything turns to dust bonfires,
when Saturdays were spiced
with nutmeg and burn-barrel blue
skies, when doorsteps were pumpkins
and scarecrows misplaced,
when Sundays meant long drives
meant fields of long
grassy bundles and no need
to ask getting lost
and TV show theme-song sing-along ways
to whittle the sun,
when how many colors
can a hill become ice cream
shop even the woods
ready to close, when inch by inch
bird by bird the world grew
less than before
and you felt for the arms of trees
the loss the here it comes again
unbearable weight
of all that letting go.


A former high school teacher, Lafayette once worked as a PA on a low-budget movie with Amanda Plummer and had the good fortune of playing her dead husband in a scene that was eventually scrapped (which pretty much sums up his career as an actor). He has poetry forthcoming in Foliate Oak, Chantarelle's Notebook, Underground Voices, Mannequin Envy, and FRIGG, among others.

 

 

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