autumn has audacity.
there’s a fickleness to every fall that can often feel like dying,
the stages of life and death on display, their theatrics at play.
limited by an insatiable lust for a former liberation,
we try to combat this carnal craving.
we may rest, divest, even heal through harvest,
yet a saturnine seasoning, without fail,
always finds its way to the table,
nutritiously mercurial and unstable.
this september, i will dine with my demons,
it is never a normal feat, never an ordinary feast.
although, it seems, i change as swiftly as the tree leaves do
each october, i remain envious of their abscission,
inferior to their foliage.
there’s a fickleness to the fiery hues,
the yellow, orange and red tepidly taunting us with their temporality,
grievously giving us a glance of their fleeting forever,
yet who am i to blame when i do the same?
now in november,
summer’s eternal youth has eluded me completely,
as it often does with ease.
autumn is adulthood and adulthood has audacity.
autumn is tragedy and autumn is drama,
dramas produced on air,
dramas performed on the stage,
and less lucratively yet all the more lucidly,
dramas predetermined by the gods and ghosts on the grand stage of life,
[en]acted in earthly realms,
all revealing the tragedies and tribulations of existence.
for them, it’s mere play, plodding and plotting plots,
us their characters of the cosmos,
a cruel god complex, us authors can only emulate.
autumn’s audacity arrives in the unremitting instances which meander through my memory,
i applaud the recesses of my mind for their commemoration,
my mother and father’s birthday,
their anniversary,
and my grandmother’s passing,
all were slated in quick succession.
did the deities determine these dates,
conversing in celestial correspondence?
autumn is audacity,
yet there’s a falling out to every fall that can feel like living.
living in liberation,
embracing the unknown,
the non-known,
and accepting the cyclical,
this is happening again,
like last time,
like two times ago,
like last time and two times ago,
like last time and two times ago again,
and again,
and again
and it will happen again,
and again,
and again…
again?
wondering,
would you have it any other way?
could you have it any other way?
the melancholy in mortality is knowing what leaves, what fades, what burns will return.
when warmth rears its cold shoulder,
we go inside and turn inside,
inward towards whatever righteousness we can scavenge in our self.
in the frisk frigidity of last december,
the sole/soul solemn embrace of the self,
was the only source of sustainment,
the only shelter from the gelid engulfment of the glacial.
indeed, in the wake of winter,
it is the exaltation in the exhalation,
the brisk breath,
bereft of whatever warmth is left,
which reminds me i am still with life,
still with life
MiC Columnist Karis Clark can be reached at kariscl@umich.edu.