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Desert Autumn
by Ed Bennett

I missed the turning maples,
the yellow-orange insinuation
against the evergreens,
the vibrance of a back yard
before the wind harvest,
the skeletal remnants against
a cooling gray sky.

The desert holds its' ground
with an earth brown scape,
no fire pigments on this canvas
of creosote and hard pan –
the days run to coolness
and the sky is cleansed of dust
by the shock of rain showers.

Autumn is little more than
shortened days and cold nights,
certainly not the gathering
of naked trees with birds gone
to warmer climes while we wait.
The cycle stops here, a seasonless place
where the sun is banked, the sky dappled.

The cycle stops here with
the chant of coyotes to
the ever present moon,
the stars on Orion's shoulders
cast wide against the darkness
and the song of a Paiute wind
in the canyon's ribs.

 


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