Autumn Ballet
The October Hoot Open Mic brought out many seasonal offerings, whether autumnal or political! This month’s featured poem covers both (“candidates’ signs sprout overnight…), in an effective list style. The list is kept interesting by mixing images (“milkweed pods made barren by the wind/hold fast like lonely grandmothers”) with description (“the smell of skunk”). It is also very satisfying that the list starts and ends with the same elements: the cold, and the car.
-- Lesley Kimball
Autumn Ballet
There is the cold, and the smell of skunk
and the sound of one car passing.
Ballerinas rise from broken milkweed pods,
some caught again by thistles.
Candidates’ signs sprout overnight on lawns
like dandelions
A forty watt bulb
replaces the hundred.
Wind moves leaves into hidden places
like relatives sent to institutions.
Jack-o-lanterns shrivel at doorways
like the old men who sleep on church steps.
Oil trucks come back
from their summer migration.
The milkweed pods made barren by the wind
hold fast like lonely grandmothers.
A few stubborn crabapples
wait to splatter on the ground.
There is the cold
and the wait for one car.
- Joan Rochette
"Autumn Ballet” Copyright 2008 by Joan Rochette. Joan is a retired nurse who's lived in many places around the country and is happy in New Hampshire.
Please note: Poems submitted to this column should not exceed nineteen lines.