One More Day

Oh, she is back again. I had forgotten all about her-
left for dead under the February snow-
buried in a burst of spring and its afterglow
of unseasonable heat, all within in a single year.

But now she returns like a sudden thought- a pause-
a slow and considered hiatus. Remember me,
she says, I come to mind like a distant memory
to let you know that I am here-- but I always was.

I cast my shadow on a crisp dawn in June
and loitered in the dusk of summer days;
I skipped past you, unnoticed, in an August haze.
Although you forgot about me, I did not you.

Let me remind you of our past in a cool breeze,
in the skittering of leaves- an amber warning-
a promise of rain on a drowsy morning-
a grass frost- a gust in the rattling trees.

Your winter clothes, locked in solitary bliss,
will soon be dusted off, and you will recall
the smell of boot leather, the familiar scratch of wool-
but not yet. First, I will grant you this...

One more day to take your final leave
before I lead you on a path of melancholic loss,
lined with briars and bracken, overhung with moss.
From moulting branches, I will cast gold leaf

and rust upon your head, like mournful confetti,
and spread my cloak beneath your feet, and all before.
Then we will go together down toward the shore
and watch the swallows drift into the hushed sea.