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Poetry

A White-Haired Man

By Gayanne Ramsden

The air smells like onion,  
And autumn grapes,  
And leaves rolled up and crushed in your mind.  
Pumpkins and marigolds flame  
Color-bright upon eyes  
That see flowers bloom in the season's slow-brilliant death  
Under a warm grey Hallow' s Eve sky.  
Leftover summer roses and summer children's voices  
Linger into fall.  
A white-haired man pauses at his door,  
I, part of his memory, he becoming a piece of mine,  
We glance hello, then drop our gaze  
Downward to leaves golden and brown  
Becoming winter's under-snow harvest
That will feed the spring.  
Still autumn day, stop and  
Place yourself in my recollections  
Where sometime in eternity  
A breath-held autumn's dusk  
of roses and grape leaves  
will come again to me .  

Gayanne Ramsden