“Nous sommes
La triste opacité de nos spectres futurs.”1
-Stéphane Mallarmé
In autumn,
I sit and drink coffee
or tea or hot cocoa
and watch the traffic on the street,
the people walking dogs
or rushing to office buildings
or late for class.
In autumn,
the coffee or tea cools quicker
with the nip of winter
on the horizon.
Those future flakes,
just around the next corner,
will fill the sky replacing
leafy hues of amber and orange.
One time,
after pumpkin carving
and the tears of another lost year,
the coffee cup warmed my fingers
and I saw a young woman
run for a bus.
Her collar turned to the winds
and her eyes shaded behind
the last vestiges of summer days:
her beach-worn sunglasses.
She paid her fare and was gone.
The bus too, gone
like the wild, youthful days
loafing in Nirvanic diner bliss.
One time,
after the final yard clean-up
with the fears of tomorrow taking hold,
I watched a pair of opaque ghosts
discuss tropical adventures
with beer and women.
These ghosts sat transparent
in my peripheral dreams.
“When you go,” one said,
“they let you do anything;
the women are up for whatever.”
In autumn,
the tears of lost years
bathe us in predictable futures.
They dampen the hems on our dungarees,
our corduroys, our perfectly tailored slacks.
We roll up cuffs,
but the sea of tears keeps rising.
Our shoes full,
we return to coffee or tea
or humble hot cocoa
and breath deep the still, sad music,
the sad opacity of long
days yet to come.
1 from “Toast Funèbre” by Stéphane Mallarmé.