Autumn Wizard, by Barbara A. Holland

AUTUMN WIZARD

by Barbara A. Holland

for Ray Bradbury 

When he fed your adolescence 
on the youth of his poems, 
do you remember 
his fireplace releasing 
his personal Octobers in sendings 
of unusual leaves: that they were crimson, 
indigo, coral and turquoise 
when they streamed 
out and once around him 
on their long glide to the ceiling? 

Do you remember that his house 
was a gaunt spinster with a rhomboid eye 
browed under angle of a gable; 
that the raw dawns of the crows 
had galled its clapboards? 

He was a poet then, 
as thin and angular as his house, 
and of a desperate season, 
when the sky screams and the clouds 
become impulsive. Not for all his summers 
has its bite diminished, even when the green-up 
hit him and his wallet swelled with May. 

He has been poet still. 
Despite the blockage of a moveable screen, 
the Autumn stuffs the yawning 
of the fireplace and the flue packs solid. 
The screen is a wall of gems, 
but even so, he sometimes 
removes it and the room is brawl 
of burst October when the crush 
crumbles and the whole belch of it charges 
the dining-room door. Then he burrows 
through the heap of his poems for air 
while his house leans on the wind.

This poem is featured in our new Poet's Press Ebook, Autumn Numbers.

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