Alan Nadel
TO OCTOBER
Your invasion is gentle coercion,
the curve of a revolution
that started before
that arrived.
Here where something is always turning–
tempers, tides, the color of trees-
you slowly take root
to pillage a trace
of life;
I knew,
or else to ease a serum in
that cues the foliage
and sets a tint
of fire in
the under-
brush,
so that before your leaving,
sunset mansions
may seem
aflame,
as though
our motion
were a match
to torch the eye
of one great fall
and not the early harvest part
of all we ever knew
we must take in.
