“Seasons Change”, posted for OneShotWednesdays and Potluck poets…

"North Carolina Moutain Stream", janekohut-bartels, watercolor, 2006

SEASONS CHANGE

–

I took a walk this morning.

The season has changed here

Though where you are they don’t.

The dried, brittle grass beneath my feet

Made a consistent crackle,

Echoed by the gossip of sparrows above.

–

The leaves are gone now from the birches and maples.

They fell like rain on fallow ground one day

And I didn’t see them go.

–

I think of your rounded arms when I see the shedding birches,

smooth bark like white skin with a faint pulse

of the river beneath.

–

Do you remember that river,

where it scared you to stand close to the bank?

You thought the earth would slip inward,

Take you on a wild ride downstream where

I couldn’t retrieve you,

And I saw for an instant

your raised arms to me,

imploring  silently to save you,

though it never happened

and you never slipped down the bank

and I never could save you.

–

But imagination plays with your mind

when it is all you have left.

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2010