This Year’s Fall Poem

By PAMELA JONES

That morning I went out
and the only sunlight left
was scattered on the ground,
windswept around the trees.

I stepped into a clearing, startling the birds. They flew up before me, their paths crisscrossing.
Robins? Mourning doves?
It’s such a blur of flight
I can no longer tell.

And the only things left in me that are still human
rise up like blades
sharp as new leaves,
a split seedpod,
a horny growth projecting from a root
breaking through the soil
with its own graphic violence.

I drive the road to see you,
pass under the swarming fall palette.
I grow breathless
at how much more beautiful
this must become
through a pinhole lens
of eternity.

(Pamela Jones, a former editorial assistant at The River Reporter, died on September 10th of last year at the age of 53.)