That Time Again

Jack Vettriano

"Cocktails and Broken Hearts"

October is simply my favorite month in the year.  This harvest season when the world winds down for its winter nap.  Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas are all well and good, but they are family events.  October is when you snuggle under the blankets and do a sort of individual inventory or take long walks on damp streets.  The days are still warm, but the nights cool and moist with fog.  Snow hasn't arrived, but the leaves are going to their death in a blaze of glory.  So here is my annual tribute to October:

Last Chances

Fall, even the name says down
Crushed into the earth.
The leaves of autumn become
No more than mulch, sacrificing what has been
To a future spring.

Foot falls, damp, the lamps of
Twilight wash sidewalks
Already wet with fog
Old songs filter through
The air thick with might have been.

Low moaning of horns and whining of clarinets
Speak of places at the end of a bar,
Old movies, and mysterious women in black
A time when gravity finally wins
To take hold of a year almost done.