Fall Colors

Rioting the roadsides, the fall colors

obscure along these miles between Hamburg

and Eden nearby streams and steady hums

of rushing water with their turning leaves.

My eye, that practiced hunter, ferrets out

a brimming river and its flow and one

odd man fishing those capped, dark blue rapids,

his hipboots severed by the river's line.

Along the roadways, too, wait empty cars,

while owners with their rifles underarm

stalk carefully the wilds for would-be game,

their blackwatch colors blending into brush.

In town, two youngsters claim a lonely bench

beside the movie house, waiting for cars

with girls and trophies of a summer sort.

A car appears landing them with its catch.

So much like my own boyhood these scenes are,

and yet the present's truer to their marks.

Next week, the pearl grey mist of early fall

will mute like Abishag the few leaves left.

Pacific Beach

Much as the coastal roads emerge from mist

these wintry mornings, those places we had

gone all that long summer have lost our cast.

Fresh, sharp outlines appear. The sands belong

to others walking slowly as paths lead,

as if the world conferred on them its song.

Unused to being looked at, we felt less

confident those mornings, wondering what

might finally distract those eyes from us

and give us back the selves we - had before,

yet reached coevally for the bright note

we struck together and heard everywhere.

The couples here respond as we did then.

More luck to them. We didn't last the fall,

retreating to vague silences again.

Tonight, as if in recompense, the view

crashes with such intensity I feel

swept clean and ready to begin anew.