poem index

occasions
themes
forms

Poem-A-Day

Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 200 new, previously unpublished poems by today's talented poets each year. On weekdays, poems are accompanied by exclusive commentary by the poets. The series highlights classic poems on weekends. Launched in 2006, Poem-a-Day is now distributed via email, web, and social media to 350,000+ readers free of charge and is available for syndication. For more information about how to syndicate Poem-a-Day, contact poem-a-day@poets.org.

In Autumn

poem
About this Poem 
“What’s terrifying about autumn is not so much the end of things, but that there’s a hidden beginning in some middle you can’t yet see but feel, the way one feels the earth move when a bulldozer tears down a building while the world turns red and yellow.”
—Mark Irwin
 
more
fullscreen

In Autumn

When within ourselves in autumn we feel the autumn
I become very still, a kind of singing, and try to move
like all things green, in one direction, when within ourselves
the autumn moves, thickening like honey, that light we smear
on faces and hands, then touch the far within one another,
something like autumn, and I think when those who knew
the dead, when they fall asleep, then what, then what in autumn
when I always feel I’m writing in red pencil on a piece
of paper growing in thickness the way a pumpkin does,
traveling at fantastic speed toward orange, toward rot, when
in autumn I remember that we are cold-smitten as I continue
smearing red on this precipice, this ledge of paper over which
I lean, trying to touch those I love, their bodies rusting
as I keep writing, sketching their red hands, faces lusting for green.
 

Copyright © 2017 by Mark Irwin. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 22, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.

Copyright © 2017 by Mark Irwin. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 22, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.

previous poems

datesort ascending title author
September 21, 2017 Wind James Arthur
September 20, 2017 The Sin of Pride John Koethe
September 19, 2017 The War in Colors Dunya Mikhail
September 18, 2017 Mistake Heather Christle
September 17, 2017 The Expiration John Donne
September 16, 2017 A Moment Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
September 15, 2017 Kettle Phillis Levin
September 14, 2017 Thursday James Longenbach
September 13, 2017 praise poets and their pens JP Howard
September 12, 2017 A Little Bit Eileen Myles

Pages