The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Edward Byrne BRIEF REPRIEVE scent of burning leaves from a neighbor’s yard. A thick line of smoke rises over the thinning trees, climbing high alongside migrating geese, though curving slightly in whatever warming breeze we might feel coming from among gusts blowing just above a stubble of southern fields and turning further toward the northern border of this state, where even the lake water remains unseasonably mild. Often, when I was young, I wondered why my father sighed each time he called such a brief reprieve from the cold fall merely a magician’s trick, but today I catch myself saying that old phrase much the same way to my teenage son as we rake our lawn together, both of us knowing this will not last very long. YELLOW ROSES Only three weeks before leaving Italy, we had discovered that quaint old café, an imitation of American dinner clubs where someone told us we just might find the kind of solo jazz saxophonist who could hit those quick high notes we had remembered hearing so often back in the States. As music played, a bluish gray haze of cigarette smoke always hovered over the open piano lid, and sipping a glass of white wine one final time together that evening, I felt as though the night might never end. All around, small petaled heads of long-stemmed roses bent, nodding from tall crystal pitchers, the golden blooms glowing like bright bulbs able to illuminate every table in the room. BURNING LEAVES Though cold enough for snow, I know bright sunshine leaning across the lawn and tilting through storm windows of my enclosed porch will warm the air trapped inside. But here, choking smoke rises slowly from a high pile of these oak leaves gone gold and brown nearly a month ago, raked late in the season by a neighbor with blistering fingers. Farther off, large clouds begin to drift in, each one shifting with a growing wind. By the time twilight slowly turns to nightfall, that smoky haze will dissipate in the starless dark, even the sharp scent of burning leaves will fade away. Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication |