The September of the West

John Chrostek

source: Getty images

We live in the September of the West,
or so it seems to me. But I know I am
as much of the West as anything, and so deprived,
know nothing else to call the coming fall.

There are still some warm
and sunny hours of comfort before us, here and there,
hours between the sufferings
that taste as bright and summersweet as honey.
But so too are there the chilling winds
and quiet tidings of the season to come,
a time of barren soil and hardships
as the greening of our august days
we once (but for a moment)
thought were endless
burn and wither into the veil
of living memory.

In all our violent idyll in the sun
we took to our breasts nothing
of the wisdom of our siblings
but their flesh and the fields
of their cradle, and so know
not what the bear and the raven knows,
how to burrow or be blown
about as if it were in
our own human nature. 

Instead, long into the equinox,
we are taught to imitate marble,
the bleached, intractable matter
the patriarchs carved into our shape,
if not our image, outlasting all else
around it promised an inevitable end
by living without life, without a shudder
of soft passion or freedom to its name
as if that were divinity.
The shadows grow longer
beneath the ambergris of dusk.
Despite its invigorating kiss,
the roots of the trees of my body
can taste the bitter nameless give below the breeze,
knowing all too well the moment's glow
is fleeting.

We live in the September of the West.
May the good growth, the better way
take its place come the spring.

John Chrostek writes poetry, prose and plays. His last (pre-covid) job was selling books at Powell's City of Books in Portland, but he’s been a lot of things in a lot of different places. His recent work can be found in publications like HAD, River Heron Review, and Deep Overstock. Find him on twitter at @yoncrowstack.