Autumn is the season swans will sing
their final song before the world will stop,
the raindrops frozen and become a blade,
the trees in catalepsis and the finches mute.
This wound afflicts our world when we’re fatigued
with spring’s old promises and summer’s wealth.
The promises are shallow, wealth soon spent.
Must they be realized another way?
What would that be but in a timeless state?
For time is what brings on the feeble round,
and time, when plucked away, displays our hope,
because this is not yet the closing end.
This world is like a clock that runs one year
and then must be rewound to heal the wound.
John J. Brugaletta is the first member of his family to finish high school and then three degrees from universities. He is now professor emeritus at California State University, Fullerton, where he edited South Coast Poetry Journal for ten years. He lives with his wife on the redwood coast of California.